"Outside, even through the shut window pane, the world looked
cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust
and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the
sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything except
the posters that were plastered everywhere."
The year is 1984; the scene is London, largest population center of
Airstrip One.
Airstrip One is part of the vast political entity Oceania, which
is eternally at war with one of two other vast entities, Eurasia
and Eastasia. At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all
existing records show either that Oceania has always been at war
with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, or that it has always been
at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia. Winston Smith knows
this, because his work at the Ministry of Truth involves the
constant "correction" of such records. "'Who controls the past,'
ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the
present controls the past.'"
In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is
always Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read
your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason
that his memory still functions. He knows the Party's official
image of the world is a fluid fiction. He knows the Party controls
the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations
through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates
each individual from his fellows and deprives him of every
liberating human pursuit from reasoned inquiry to sexual passion.
Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to
join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood,
dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his
beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the
powers that be.
Newspeak, doublethink, thoughtcrime--in 1984, George Orwell
created a whole vocabulary of words concerning totalitarian control
that have since passed into our common vocabulary. More
importantly, he has portrayed a chillingly credible dystopia. In
our deeply anxious world, the seeds of unthinking conformity are
everywhere in evidence; and Big Brother is always looking for his
chance. --Daniel Hintzsche
Review
Novel by George Orwell, published in 1949 as a warning about the
menaces of totalitarianism. The novel is set in an imaginary future
world that is dominated by three perpetually warring totalitarian
police states. The book's hero, Winston Smith, is a minor party
functionary in one of these states. His longing for truth and
decency leads him to secretly rebel against the government. Smith
has a love affair with a like-minded woman, but they are both
arrested by the Thought Police. The ensuing imprisonment, torture,
and reeducation of Smith are intended not merely to break him
physically or make him submit but to root out his independent
mental existence and his spiritual dignity. Orwell's warning of the
dangers of totalitarianism made a deep impression on his
contemporaries and upon subsequent readers, and the book's title
and many of its coinages, such as NEWSPEAK, became bywords for
modern political abuses. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of
Literature
Review
“Nineteen Eighty-Four is a remarkable book; as a virtuoso literary
performance it has a sustained brilliance that has rarely been
matched in other works of its genre…It is as timely as the label on
a poison bottle.” –New York Herald Tribune
“A profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating book…Orwell’s
theory of power is developed brilliantly.” –The New Yorker
“A book that goes through the reader like an east wind, cracking
the skin…Such are the originality, the suspense, the speed of
writing, and withering indignation that it is impossible to put the
book down.” –V. S. Pritchett
“Orwell’s novel escorts us so quietly, so directly, and so
dramatically from our own day to the fate which may be ours in the
future, that the experience is a blood-chilling one.” –Saturday
Review .