Here is a grim, first-person account of poverty, hunger, and ennui, read perfectly by narrator Patrick Tull. In sometimes humorous, sometimes sickening detail, Orwell describes his life as a dishwasher in the bowels of a grimy/elegant Paris hotel, and as a half-starved tramp making the rounds of homeless shelters in greater London. Using powerful, yet seemingly effortless prose, Orwell argues that the poor are no different than anyone else.

Havi Hoffman