Down and Out in Paris and London

The thief who took the last of an ailing George Orwell’s money from his Paris room in 1929 did a big favour to political literature. -- Vanessa Thorpe ― Observer

Little that Orwell has written, here and elsewhere, has lost the hum of relevancy, from the causes of poverty and its long-term effects – “it annihilates the future” – to its everyday toll of boredom. -- Laurence Mackin ― Irish Times

Down and Out is an extraordinary and curious book: beautifully phrased, meticulous, honest and funny. George Orwell’s 1933 memoir, and a study of poverty, is a book both rooted in its era and able to transcend it. ― Independent

Orwell’s is a plea for empathy for the laborer, the tramp, and the impoverished . . . [it] is a fascinating anthropological study of poverty, its empirical value tarnished by its richly entertaining prose, and overt imposition of Orwell’s political dispositions upon his observations. ― Medium

Books like Down and Out show us that the line between deprivation and success can be a very thin one. The latter is often achieved through learning how to love the former . . . What makes [it] fantastic is his lucid prose. ― LA Review of Books

Have a look at the book and catch the strange fascination of the telling. Vivid and lurid and unappetizing, are the pictures he gives of what goes on behind the scenes, human and otherwise. ― Kirkus Reviews

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