Nineteen Eighty-Four

george orwell daniel lagin thomas pynchon erich fromm

The new novel by George Orwell is the major work towards which all his previous writing has pointed. Critics have hailed it as his "most solid, most brilliant" work. Though the story of Nineteen Eighty-Four takes place thirty-five years hence, it is in every sense timely. The scene is London, where there has been no new housing since 1950 and where the city-wide slums are called Victory Mansions. Science has abandoned Man for the State. As every citizen knows only too well, war is peace.

To Winston Smith, a young man who works in the Ministry of Truth (Minitru for short), come two people who transform this life completely. One is Julia, whom he meets after she hands him a slip reading, "I love you." The other is O'Brien, who tells him, "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness." The way in which Winston is betrayed by the one and, against his own desires and instincts, ultimately betrays the other, makes a story of mounting drama and suspense.

Alternate cover edition can be found here.

Genres classicsfictionscience fictiondystopialiteraturepoliticsnovelsschoolaudiobookfantasy

339 pages, Paperback

First published June 8,1949

Literary awards

prometheus hall of fame award, audie award, goodreads choice award,

This edition

Format: 339 pages, Paperback
Published: May 6, 2003 by Plume
ISBN
ASIN: 0452284236
Language: English

Characters More characters

Big Brother

the dark-eyed, mustachioed embodiment of the Party who rules Oceania...
Obrien

About fifty year old. He wears glasses. A member of the Inner Party who poses as a member of The Brotherhood, the counter-revolutionary resistance, in order to deceive, trap, and capture Winston and Julia. OBrien has a servant named Martin.m...
Emmanuel Goldstein

ostensibly a former leader of the Party, counter-revolutionary leader of the Brotherhood, and author of The Book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, Goldstein is the symbolic enemy of the state—the national nemesis who ideologically uni...
Tom Parsons

Married with two kids....
Syme

...
Julia

Julia is a 26-year old girl who lives in a hostel with 30 other girls. She operates the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth....

About the author

george orwell

Eric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism (both authoritarian communism and fascism), and support of democratic socialism.
Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.
Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime". In 2008, The Times named Orwell the second-greatest British writer since 1945.