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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... Read Full Overview

Before the war How long shall we go on saying that, I wonder? How long before the answer will be 'Which war?'

Coming Up for Air is a novel by George Orwell, first published in June 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. It combines premonitions of the impending war with images of an idyllic Thames-side Edwardian era childhood. The novel is pessimistic, with its view that... Read Full Overview

Striking the balance between comical and pessimistic, this Orwellian novel follows 45-year-old George Bowling as he foresees the horrors of World War Two trying to escape the threat of violence and old age by retreating to his childhood town.

Coming Up For Air by George Orwell George Bowling, the hero of this comic novel, is a middle-aged insurance salesman who lives in an average English suburban row house with a wife and two children. One day, after winning some money from a bet, he goes back to the village where... Read Full Overview

George Bowling, an insurance salesman, hits middle age and feels impelled to come up for air from his life of quiet desperation. With seventeen pounds he has won at a race, he steals a vacation from his wife and his family and pays a visit to Lower Binfield, the village where... Read Full Overview

George Orwell's paean to the end of an idyllic era in British history, Coming Up for Air is a poignant account of one man's attempt to recapture childhood innocence as war looms on the horizon from the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in Penguin Modern Classics.George... Read Full Overview

"First published in 1939, Coming Up for Air is a novel written by George Orwell shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Set in 1938 London, the story revolves around a middle-aged insurance salesman George Bowling who lives in a suburban row-house with his wife and two children... Read Full Overview

Coming Up for Air is a novel by George Orwell, first published in June 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. It combines premonitions of the impending war with images of an idyllic Thames-side Edwardian era childhood. The novel is pessimistic, with its view that... Read Full Overview