Ever been short of cash in Paris or London? Think again
Paris and London – the blurb
‘You have talked so often of going to the dogs – and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them.’
Written when Orwell was a struggling writer in his twenties, it documents his ‘first contact with poverty’. Here, he painstakingly documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor – sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses of last resort, working as a dishwasher in Paris’s vile ‘Hôtel X’, surviving on scraps and cigarette butts, living alongside tramps, a star-gazing pavement artist and a starving Russian ex-army captain. Exposing a shocking, previously-hidden world to his readers, Orwell gave a human face to the statistics of poverty for the first time – and in doing so, found his voice as a writer.
See a penny pick it up
Everybody has heard of 1984 but how many other books by Orwell has anyone read? Well for me none so I set about correcting it with Paris and London, a book I initially thought was fiction but is in actual fact a memoir based on Orwell’s early adulthood. It doesn’t read like your typical non fiction being easy to read and short in page count. Being non fiction it isn’t plot lead but captures the minute details of living life on the breadline. Or should that be below the breadline? I found it fascinating to read how the inner workings of a Paris hotel worked, had never heard of a ‘spike’ before and pondered you could survive on tea and two slices. I mean tea is life but just one cup and two slices of bread and marg. a day? A really interesting read, short, not necessarily sweet but definitely worth seeking out.
