1984 (NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR)
From Wikipedia:
Nineteen Eighty-Four, sometimes published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by George Orwell published in 1949.The
novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of
the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government
surveillance and public manipulation, dictated by a political system
euphemistically named English Socialism (or Ingsoc in the government's invented
language, Newspeak) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite, that
persecutes individualism and independent thinking as "thoughtcrimes".
The tyranny is epitomized by Big Brother, the quasi-divine Party leader who
enjoys an intense cult of personality but who may not even exist. The Party
"seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good
of others; we are interested solely in power." The protagonist of the
novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, who works for the
Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue), which is responsible for propaganda and
historical revisionism. His job is to rewrite past newspaper articles, so that
the historical record always supports the party line. Smith is a diligent and
skillful worker but he secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against
Big Brother.
As literary political fiction and dystopian science-fiction,
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel in content, plot and style. Many of its
terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak,
Room 101, telescreen, 2 + 2 = 5 and memory hole, have entered everyday use
since its publication in 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four popularized the adjective
Orwellian, which describes official deception, secret surveillance and
manipulation of recorded history by a totalitarian or authoritarian state. In
2005, the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the 100 best
English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.It was awarded a place on both lists
of Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 13 on the editor's list, and
6 on the readers' list. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 8 on the BBC's
survey The Big Read.
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