Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Keep the Aspidistra Flying first published in 1936 is a socially critical novel by George Orwell. It is set in 1930s London. The main theme is Gordon Comstocks romantic ambition to defy worship of the money-god and status and the dismal life that results. He etches the ugly insanity of what Gordon calls the money-world in unflinching detail but the satire has a second edge too and Gordon himself is scarcely heroic. In the course of his misadventures we become grindingly aware that his radical solution to the problem of the money-world is no solution at all--that in his desperate reaction against a monstrous system he has become something of a monster himself.