Book: Long live the lily Genre: British Novel Written by: George Orwell Translation: Mazen Sfan Description: A social criticism novel, published in 1936 by the British George Orwell. It takes place in London in the 1930s, and its main theme is Gordon Comstock's romantic ambition to conquer the cult of the "lord of money" and social status, and the dismal life that results from this worship.. The novel is perhaps a better guide to Orwell's intellectual development than his autobiography. It is the novel in which Orwell was directly influenced by one of his heroes, George Gising, the late Victorian novelist whose New Group Street remained the primary description of literary failure. In his later essay on Gissing, Orwell describes the perfect flavor of Gissing's world: "dirt, stupidity, ugliness, sexual hunger, hidden immorality, vulgarity, bad morals, and censorship", which sums up the world Orwell sought to capture and criticize in this novel.
