Keep the Aspidistra Flying is George Orwell's savagely satirical portrait of the literary life and is based loosely on his own experiences of writing life and working at Westrope�s Bookshop in Hampstead.

London, 1936. Gordon Comstock has declared war on the money god; and Gordon is losing the war. Nearly 30 and "rather moth-eaten already," a poet whose one small book of verse has fallen "flatter than any pancake," Gordon rejects money-worship and a steady job in advertising for the pursuit of creativity. But poverty soon bites, and with it his creative spirit disappears. Only his ever-faithful Rosemary can rouse him from the stupor and challenge his commitment to his chosen way of life.

Punctuated with autobiographical detail, Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying is a tragically comic account of one man�s struggle to escape from a materialistic life.