Nineteen Eighty-Four

George Orwell

Jan 2004 · Penguin UK

About this eBook

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.

Ratings and reviews

Books can be read. Others change your mind. 1984 is so well structured, well paced and intriguing that you will find yourself having flash of the story in your life, as you walk about during your everyday tasks. Yes 1984 changed my heart and opened my mind to an important sensitivity. It is not only its content and twists, it is his well throught out ideas which details can make it so believable we make not afford at all imagining how this alternative world could actually exist. My favourite book.

Orwell manages in a time pre-internet to deduct the eventual ubiquity of spying and governmental deceit, in a masterfully crafted book about lies, conspiracies, and twists. Definitely a must-read.

Finally read this after years of meaning to. Superbly written, right down to the appendix on Newspeak. Scary how applicable it is to the tyranny of today's ruling elite. We're not far off. :-/

About the author

Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), better known by his pen-name, George Orwell, was born in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. An author and journalist, Orwell was one of the most prominent and influential figures in twentieth-century literature. His unique political allegory Animal Farm was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with the dystopia of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which brought him world-wide fame. His novels and non-fiction include Burmese Days, Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia.