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Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Nov 24, 2025 8:26 AM

Author:George Orwell,Peter Davison

Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Gordon Comstock loathes dull, middle-class respectability and worship of money. He gives up a 'good job' in advertising to work part-time in a bookshop, giving him more time to write. But he slides instead into a self-induced poverty that destroys his creativity and his spirit. Only Rosemary, ever-faithful Rosemary, has the strength to challenge his commitment to his chosen way of life. Through the character of Gordon Comstock, Orwell reveals his own disaffection with the society he once himself renounced.

Enlivened with vivid autobiographical detail, George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying is a tragically witty account of the struggle to escape from a materialistic existence, with an introduction by Peter Davison in Penguin Modern Classics.

Reviews

Very amusing, ironic and wise... a success, no doubt about it

—— Sydney Morning Herald

A novel of epic proportions. It's not merely about characters and events, but also about shapes and landscapes, history and the future, fact and falsehood, light and darkness... He writes with a rare perception of the Australian struggle for a defineable identity in bold, inventive, often wildly funny prose

—— David Rooney , Time Out

The work of a dazzling imagination

—— Kate Saunders , Independent

Survivor comes bowling forth out of the same dark corner of the mind as Fight Club... Like its predecessor, it is a terminal novel, a novel that applies the firing-squad principle to extort tortured eloquence from its doomed narrator

—— Esquire

Brilliant satire and savagely funny, Survivor offers much to admire. Palahniuk displays a swiftian gift for satire, as well as a knack for crafting mesmerizing sentences that loom with stark, prickly prose and repetitive rhythms

—— San Francisco Chronicle

One of the most gripping and touching stories I have ever read

—— Peter Snow , Week

This is a gem

—— Mirror

Stands out from the mass of chick-fic like a poppy in a cornfield . . . Glitters with insight

—— Nova

Praise for Lisa Jewell

—— -

Addictively readable

—— The Times

Terrific

—— Sunday Times

A joy . . . a fun summer read

—— Guardian

Tackles serious issues with humour - proving that chick-lit can be intelligent, interesting and huge fun

—— Sunday Express

A triumph

—— Hello

Top marks. Fantastic

—— Heat

Moving and intelligent

—— Independent

Magnetic, unpretentious and bursting with one-liners

—— Cosmopolitan

Jewell's readability and emotional intelligence make her the cream of pop fiction

—— Glamour

Fans of chick-lit will understand when I say that this is a book you simply disappear into

—— Sunday Telegraph
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