Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [312]

From somewhere at the bottom of a passage the smell of roasting coffee – real coffee, not Victory Coffee – came floating out into the street. Winston paused involuntarily. For perhaps two seconds he was back in the half-forgotten world of his childhood. Then a door banged, seeming to cut off the smell as abruptly as though it had been a sound. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 312

Note

The door banging ‘as though it had been a sound’ — a synesthetic simile where an odor is severed by an interruption processed as auditory. The one-word qualifier ‘involuntarily’ and the ‘half-forgotten world of his childhood’ reverse the usual nostalgia: smell here is a fault-line exposing residual memory.