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 Orwells 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.
