Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell; Unabridged MP3 Audio Book; Narrator Richard Brown

Gordon Comstock is a poor young man who works by day in a grubby London bookstore and spends his evenings shivering in a rented room, trying to write. Gordon has published a slim volume of verse and is determined to keep free of the “money world” of safe, lucrative jobs, marriage, and family responsibilities. This world, to Gordon, spells the end of art and aspidistra, the homely, indestructible house plant that stands in every middle-class British window.

Gordon’s sweetheart, Rosemary, understands him: she is patient with his pride and lack of funds. But then, as it happens with all lovers, events overtake them.

Orwell’s picture of the “money world,” as Gordon sees it, is in his best satirical vein.

“Gritty, growling, commonsensical and touching. [Orwell] never wrote a basically kinder or more human novel.”—Time

“A delightful addition to the Orwell literature…A work Orwell enthusiasts will bracket with Down and Out in Paris and London.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Richard Brown reads in a clear voice and effectively captures the rhythms of the text.” —Library Journal

“A remarkable novel…A summa of all the criticisms of a commercial civilization that have ever been made.”—Lionel Trilling

George Orwell (1903-1950), the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, was an English novelist, essayist, and critic. He was born in India and educated at Eton. After service with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, he returned to Europe to earn his living by writing and became notable for his simplicity of style and his journalistic or documentary approach to fiction.