Keep The Aspidistra Flying

"Keep The Aspidistra Flying" is a 1936 novel by George Orwell. The book is a social critique set in 1930s London. 

The story revolves around the protagonist, Gordon Comstock, who fantasises about defying the worship of money and status, and how, in his attempt to escape these vices, he creates a rather dismal life for himself.

George Orwell wrote "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" in 1934/35 while working at a bookshop in Hampstead and it was published in April 1936, just a few months before he left to fight in the Spanish Civil War. It is a novel of its time, capturing something of the ideological conflict, sociological concern, and economic distrust which so characterised the 1930s.