Nineteen Eighty-Four

by George Orwell

Thomas Pynchon (Introduction) and Ben Pimlott (Foreword)

One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World'

'Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past'

Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.

George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four is perhaps the most pervasively influential book of the twentieth century.

• ISBN10: 014118776X
• ISBN13: 9780141187761
• Publish Date: 29 January 2004 (first published 1 July 1905)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 5 March 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Penguin Classics
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 384
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/isbn/9780141187761

Reviews

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

As literary science fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel of the social science fiction sub-genre, the terms and concepts of Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Memory hole et cetera, became contemporary vernacular, including the adjective Orwellian, denoting George Orwell’s writings and totalitarianism as exposited in Nineteen Eighty-Four. George Orwell has mastered the art of writing, and dystopian societies so much so that even now days there is a sense of science fiction and relevants to our society.