Coming Up For Air

by George Orwell

Overview

From George Orwell, the author of 1984 and Animal Farm, Coming Up for Air is the classic, comic novel about the everyday struggles of the common man and a satiric look at the trappings of middle-class suburbia.

George "Tubby" Bowling is a middle-aged insurance salesman, a job at which he grimly excels, dutifully paying the mortgage on an average English suburban row house, and supporting an ungrateful family. As the years roll by, he comes to feel like a hostage to his wife and children, regarding them as wardens and himself as a prisoner.

One day, after winning some money from a bet at the races, George steals away from his family to visit the village where he grew up, to fish for carp in a pool he remembers from thirty years before. The pool, alas, is gone, the village has changed beyond recognition, and the principal event of his holiday is an accidental bombing by the RAF—the perfect ending to his failed escape.

"A work of rare vigor and imagination."—New York Herald-Tribune Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780156196253
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/22/1969
Series:	Harvest Book Series
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	147,173
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.75(d)
Lexile:	1060L (what's this?)

About the Author

George Orwell (1903–1950), the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, was an English novelist, essayist, and critic. He was born in India and educated at Eton. After service with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, he returned to Europe to earn his living by writing. An author and journalist, Orwell was one of the most prominent and influential figures in twentieth-century literature. His unique political allegory Animal Farm was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with the dystopia of 1984 (1949), which brought him worldwide fame. 

Table of Contents

About the Book & Author

Part I

I

II

III

IV

Part II

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

Part III

I

II

III

Part IV

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

Editorial Reviews

"That's the way we're going nowadays. Everything slick and streamlined, everything made out of something else."

"Sentimental, you say? Anti-social? Oughtn't to prefer trees to men? I say it depends what trees and what men."

― George Orwell, Coming Up for Air

From the Publisher