We
About this ebook
“The dystopian novel most relevant to our time.” -The Week
“Left an indelible watermark on 20th century culture.” -Publishers Weekly
Easily one of the most influential science-fiction novels of all time, this 1921 masterpiece inspired George Orwell’s 1984 and became the first book ever banned by the Soviet Union.
One thousand years in the future, the perfect totalitarian state has stripped humanity of any desire for individuality, privacy, or control over their own lives… almost. When a government scientist becomes enamored with a sultry revolutionary, his eyes are opened to the horrors of his own unthinking, unfeeling existence in total subservience to the state. But when he enlists in her plot to overthrow the government and its all-seeing figurehead, the Well-Doer, he’ll soon discover there is no escape and freedom is an irretrievable relic of an all-but-forgotten past.
This is the original English translation as first published in 1924, including the foreword by translator Gregory Zilboorg.
About the author
A naval engineer by trade, Zamyatin was imprisoned in Siberia and then exiled from Tsarist Russia for revolutionary activities. He returned after the Communist Revolution only to be arrested a few years later and sentenced to the same Siberian prison for authoring We and repeatedly smuggling it to foreign publishers.He appealed directly to Stalin for permission to flee the Soviet Union, which was granted in 1931, and he died six years later in poverty in Paris.