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Coming Up For Air
Coming Up For Air
Jan 2, 2026 3:17 PM

Author:George Orwell

Coming Up For Air

Volume 7 of The Complete Works of George Orwell

Coming Up for Air looks back from the sprawl of thirties housing estates, new arterial roads and the domination of the motor car, to an idealised golden England, largely rural and unmechanised when, in the nostalgia of childhood, it was ‘summer. . . always summer’. It looks forward to the destruction wrought by air-raids (though written in 1938–1939, war is expected in 1941) leading to ‘The world we’re going down into, the kind of hate-world, slogan-world. . the rubber truncheons. . the posters with enormous faces’ that will be Nineteen Eighty-Four. Yet, despite its sense of loss and its grim foreboding, Coming Up for Air is a very funny book, with a rich sense of the incongruity of life and people, and it is illuminated by Orwell's wry, sardonic wit in which there is not a little self-parody.

Reviews

I am so thrilled by the BBC's production of my novel, The Hours, and - believe me - a novelist does not thrill easily

—— Michael Cunningham

This is a novelisation that needs to be experienced, better yet to be felt.

—— Phil Roberts in The Future of the Force

Slick and playful

—— Star Wars Aficionado

The book stands alone as its own work of art that simply can’t be compared (extensively) to the script from which it was derived

—— Dork Side of the Force

Definitely recommended for fans and people who want more depth in the story

—— Star Wars Awakens

‘Solo is easily one of my favorite Star Wars books of the year, and one of my favorite Star Wars movie novelizations period. Making a novelization exciting is always a tricky business because authors need to keep readers engaged with a story where they already know what’s coming. Solo pulls this off by adding just the right amount of extra detail to keep each scene fresh and interesting without veering too far from the original movie and turning this into a completely new story. I’d recommend picking up Solo: A Star Wars Story whether or not you enjoyed the movie earlier this year, because I think it will make you love it more either way.’

—— Geek Mom

She gives a voice to the voiceless...The Silence of the Girls is a book that will be read in generations to come

—— Daily Telegraph

An impressive feat of literary revisionism that should be on the Man Booker longlist... This is a story about the very real cost of wars waged by men... Barker makes us re-think history

—— Independent

Giving voice to the voiceless, this is a gripping feat of imagination that succeeds in being relevant today

—— Woman and Home

The most important novel based on The Iliad so far this century

—— Edith Hall

The magic of Barker's book is that the resonance of giving silenced women a voice at the centre of the story is just as relevant today

—— Grazia

[Pat Barker] is one of our finest modern chroniclers of war...this magisterial novel is both a timely exploration of power, misogyny and violence and an elegant counternarrative to one of literature's founding conflicts

—— The Guardian
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