Money. He hates it. He despises it. He dreams of smashing the whole corrupt system that puts a price on art, on love, on the human soul. And so Gordon Comstock, struggling poet and proud rebel, has declared war on the modern world. He has traded respectability for poverty, comfort for principle, and a steady job in advertising for a miserable existence in a damp London bedsit.
But freedom, he discovers, has a price of its own. As the coins in his pocket dwindle and his girlfiend Rosemary grows weary of a future without hope, Gordon finds himself trapped in a different kind of prison. The aspidistra-that ugly, resilient plant that sits in every proper English parlor-haunts him as a symbol of everything he loathes: respectability, conformity, the soul-crushing pursuit of security. Yet without it, he is nothing at all.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying is George Orwell's savage, funny, and painfully honest portrait of a man at war with himself. It is a novel about poverty that stings with autobiographical truth, a meditation on art and commerce that cuts to the bone, and a timeless story of love, pride, and the compromises we make to survive. For anyone who has ever dreamed of dropping out-or wondered what happens when you do.
