For all the books about George Orwell’s life and career, insights from his formative writing years remain thin on the ground. Orwell’s first published work, Down and Out in Paris and London has until now been the only window on his life in the French capital at the end of the 1920s. But how far can Orwell’s account be trusted?

A lack of solid information has led Down and Out to be variously labelled as ‘autobiography’, ‘travel-writing’ even ‘fictional memoir’. Curious about Orwell’s stay in his home city, Duncan Roberts set out to solve the mystery.

Orwell in Paris reveals the real identities and locations in Down & Out. These concealed truths – obscured at the request of Orwell's publisher Victor Gollancz who feared libel – have never been divulged or discovered by any of his biographers. Revelatory archive discoveries in France, Belgium and the Ukraine now mean that Orwell's Parisian life can be viewed in a different light. Orwell in Paris places pins on what had previously been a blank map, replacing pseudonyms with real names and real lives. Exactly who was Boris the Russian captain and how did he end up in Paris? Where exactly was the infamous Auberge du Jean Cottard restaurant that used sweat-ridden blankets as tablecloths? Who did Orwell hang out with in 1929?

Orwell in Paris is an immersive read providing valuable new insights into Orwell’s source material for Down & Out and how this period influenced the major later works of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The book navigates between Orwell’s sordid kitchen experiences, Boris’s intriguing First World War backstory and the author’s literary detective work in present-day Paris.

Almost a hundred years after the original manuscript was altered – and subsequently lost – new light is shone on the dark corners of a much-loved classic.