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About the Book

About the Book

Burning Down George Orwell's House

A darkly comic debut novel about advertising, truth, single malt, Scottish hospitality --- or lack thereof --- and George Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR.

Ray Welter, who was until recently a highflying advertising executive in Chicago, has left the world of newspeak behind. He decamps to the isolated Scottish Isle of Jura in order to spend a few months in the cottage where George Orwell wrote most of his seminal novel, NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR. Ray is miserable, and quite prepared to make his troubles go away with the help of copious quantities of excellent scotch.

But a few of the local islanders take a decidedly shallow view of a foreigner coming to visit in order to sort himself out, and Ray quickly finds himself having to deal with not only his own issues but also a community whose eccentricities are at times amusing and at others downright dangerous. Also, the locals believe --- or claim to believe --- that there’s a werewolf about, and against his better judgment, Ray’s misadventures build to the night of a traditional, boozy werewolf hunt on the Isle of Jura on the summer solstice.

Burning Down George Orwell's House
by Andrew Ervin

  • Publication Date: April 12, 2016
  • Genres: Fiction
  • Paperback: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Soho Press
  • ISBN-10: 1616956526
  • ISBN-13: 9781616956523