Down and Out in Paris and London
First published 1933 · English · 213 pages
- Novels
- Historical fiction
- Biography and memoir
Orwell's first full-length book is an account of his years of poverty in two great cities. In Paris, the narrator works long hours as a dishwasher in hotel and restaurant kitchens, and meets a lively range of characters living on the edge. In London he drifts among tramps, lodging houses and charity shelters. Part memoir and part reportage, the book describes hunger, boredom, work and small kindnesses with a sharp eye and little self-pity. It also questions common assumptions about people who are poor or homeless. It shows early signs of the plain, honest style that later made Orwell famous.
Quotes
There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter.
Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after-effects of influenza than anything else. It is as though all one's blood had been pumped out and lukewarm water substituted.
One always abandons something in retreat. Look at Napoleon at the Beresina! He abandoned his whole army.
Ah, the poverty, the shortness the disappointment of human joy! For in reality car en realite, what is the duration of the supreme moment of love? It is nothing, an instant, a second perhaps. A second of ecstasy, and after that- dust, ashes, nothingness.