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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
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Biography, Literature & Literary studies

BURNING DOWN GEORGE ORWELL'S HOUSE

Andrew Ervin

A darkly comic story about advertising, truth, single malt, Scottish hospitality (or the lack thereof), and, of course, Orwell’s NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR.

As the novel opens, our protagonist, Ray, until recently a high-flying ad executive in Chicago, has left the world of consumerist newspeak behind and is about to catch a ferry to the Isle of Jura in order to spend a few months in the cottage in which Orwell wrote most of his seminal novel. Ray is miserable, for reasons we come to understand, and quite prepared to make his troubles go away with the help of copious quantities of excellent single malt. But some of the islanders take a decidedly shallow view of a foreigner coming to visit in order to figure stuff out, and so Ray quickly finds himself having to deal with not just his own issues but also a community whose eccentricities are at times amusing and at others downright dangerous. If you liked “Local Hero” or A. L. Kennedy’s EVERYTHING YOU NEED, then this is for you. Andrew Ervin is a Philadelphia based fiction writer and critic. He is the author of the acclaimed novella sequence EXTRAORDINARY RENDITIONS (Coffee House Press, 2010), which was one of Publishers Weekly’s best books of the year. BURNING.. is his first novel. He currently teaches in the Honors Program at Temple Uni.

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Book Published 2015-05-01 by Soho Press

Comments

A sharply funny portrait of a young yuppie returning to something approaching a “state of nature”… Is it possible to open up to the outside world; to knowledge, to literature and art, without a cost to a place's identity? This is the finely-formed question posed by Andrew Ervin…an interrogation of societies’ ability to surmount their self-erected barricades. Read more...

Burning Down George Orwell's House is really most enjoyable, a witty, original turn on the life and memory of the Sage of Jura, taking place on the island where he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. Eric Blair serves as the McGuffin in this story, which is one part black comedy and one part a meditation on modern life. It is well-written and truly original.

Beyond being a vastly entertaining novel, cunningly observed and delicately flavored with the very finest Scotch whiskey on the planet, Burning Down George Orwell’s House is a serious meditation on just how Orwellian our world has really become. Let Andrew Ervin help you imagine your way to a world beyond Big Brother.

A dramatic, thoughtful, and at times comic revisiting of (and attempt to escape from) Orwell's world.

Ray Welter – corrupted, debauched, cuckolded, fighting all the way down – is a brilliant creation, and Andrew Ervin’s BURNING DOWN GEORGE ORWELL’S HOUSE is a work of laudable mischief.

Andrew Ervin's debut BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE - it's going to be reviewed and featured on today's National Public Radio "Fresh Air" broadcast. This is one of the most significant radio segments over here, as the show has been running since 1987 and claims 4.5 million listeners daily. So we're really thrilled that BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE made the cut for this prime slot! (May 13, 2015)

A wildly compelling literary debut from the original and inspired pen of Andrew Ervin, Burning Down George Orwell’s House is a captivating novel soaked in wit and whiskey. A dark, but striking read, the author ingeniously draws you into the disturbing world of Jura and its menacing inhabitants. A wickedly funny book, I was moved and excited, a highly effective and poetic revelation on consumer living. I fucking loved it.

Exhilarating: once you've started turning the pages, you can't stop. And when you’ve finished, dazzled by the author's talent, you rush to return to it.

A brainy and complex first novel, which despite its interludes of sun and its “happy ending”, is also a dark one; a novel which indeed could be read as a parable of the ills of the Western white male. The whole is however delivered with humour and reinforced with plenty of whisky, that elixir of the gods, golden, earthy, violent and bewitching – just like this book. The book, however, can be consumed without moderation.