Down and Out in Paris and London

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George Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London (1999, Penguin Books Ltd)

224 pages

Published Feb. 25, 1999 by Penguin Books Ltd.

ISBN:
978-0-14-028256-6
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5 stars (1 review)

'You have talked so often of going to the dogs – and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them.' George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time among the desperately poor and destitute in London and Paris is a moving tour of the underworld of society. Here he painstakingly documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor – sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses, working as a dishwasher in the vile 'Hotel X', living alongside tramps, surviving on scraps and cigarette butts – in an unforgettable account of what being down and out is really like.

45 editions

Immediately engaging with a lively prose style

5 stars

In researching the background to Down And Out In Paris And London I found out that the book was initially published as a work of fiction before Orwell admitted that it was practically all autobiographical, albeit with his London homelessness occurring before his Parisian stint in real life. As with the other books of his that I have read, this one is immediately engaging with such a lively prose style that I found it to be a real page-turner. Orwell is simultaneously incredibly insightful and observant, but rarely harangues his readers. Instead he shows us the life he led for several years, described in often sickening clarity. I'm not a particular fan of posh hotels or restaurant dining anyway, but after spending a few hours with Orwell at his dead-end job in an overheated cellar kitchen, Iit will be a long time before I risk eating food I haven't personally …