We (Modern Library Classics) [Paperback]

Yevgeny Zamyatin (Author), Natasha Randall (Translator), Bruce Sterling (Foreword)

Book Description

Release date: July 11, 2006 | Series: Modern Library Classics

Translated by Natasha Randall
Foreword by Bruce Sterling
 
Written in 1921, We is set in the One State, where all live for the collective good and individual freedom does not exist. The novel takes the form of the diary of mathematician D-503, who, to his shock, experiences the most disruptive emotion imaginable: love. At once satirical and sobering—and now available in a powerful new translation—We is both a rediscovered classic and a work of tremendous relevance to our own times.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

First published in the Soviet 1920s, Zamyatin's dystopic novel left an indelible watermark on 20th-century culture, from Orwell's 1984 to Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil. Randall's exciting new translation strips away the Cold War connotations and makes us conscious of Zamyatin's other influences, from Dostoyevski to German expressionism. D-503 is a loyal "cipher" of the totalitarian One State, literally walled in by glass; he is a mathematician happily building the world's first rocket, but his life is changed by meeting I-330, a woman with "sharp teeth" who keeps emerging out of a sudden vampirish dusk to smile wickedly on the poor narrator and drive him wild with desire. (When she first forces him to drink alcohol, the mind leaps to Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel.) In becoming a slave to love, D-503 becomes, briefly, a free man. In Randall's hands, Zamyatin's modernist idiom crackles ("I only remember his fingers: they flew out of his sleeve, like bundles of beams"), though the novel sometimes seems prophetic of the onset of Stalinism, particularly in the bleak ending. Modern Library's reintroduction of Zamyatin's novel is a literary event sure to bring this neglected classic to the attention of a new readership. (On sale July 11)
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Review

“[Zamyatin’s] intuitive grasp of the irrational side of totalitarianism—human sacrifice, cruelty as an end in itself—makes [We] superior to Huxley’s [Brave New World].”—George Orwell

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Modern Library; Reprint edition (July 11, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081297462X
• ISBN-13: 978-0812974621
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #64,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 84 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I am he as you are he as you are me August 1, 2006

By Leonard Fleisig TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

and we are all together.

The Beatles' "I am the Walrus" provides some flavor for the atmosphere of the futuristic society found in Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian classic "WE". Written in the fledgling Soviet Union in 1920 "WE" had a direct influence n Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Ayn Rand's Anthem. In fact, Rand's Anthem tracks "WE" so closely both as to plot and character development that one cannot help but think that Zamyatin's influence on Rand was significant, to say the least.

Zamyatin was born in 1884 and studied naval engineering as a young man. Like many young Russian intellectuals Zamyatin was something of a revolutionary. He was arrested and exiled more than once by the Tsar's secret police for revolutionary activities. During the First World War Zamyatin, by now a naval enginner, was sent to England were he supervised the construction of icebreakers for the Russian navy. He returned to Russia upon the outbreak of the October 1917 revolution. Zamyatin turned to writing full time after the revolution. Although a Bolshevik, Zamyatin chafed at the increasing censorship the Bolsheviks imposed on artists and writers. WE was the first novel to be banned by the newly formed literary censorship board, GLAVLIT. WE was not officially published in Russia or the USSR until 1988. Not able to earn a living as a writer in the USSR, Zamyatin applied for an exit visa. Zamyatin was granted an exit visa and he emigrated to Paris, were he died a sick and poverty stricken man in 1937.

WE takes place in the twenty-sixth century where a totalitarian regime has created an extremely regimented society where individual expression simply does not exist. All remnants of individuality have been stripped from its inhabitants including their names. Their names have been replaced with an alpha-numeric system. People are not coupled. Rather, each individual is assigned three friends with whom they can have intimate relations on a rigid schedule established by the state. Those scheduled assignations are the only times the shades in a citizen's glass houses can be closed. Apart from those hourly intervals everyone's life is monitored by the state. As in Orwell's 1984, language has been turned on its head. Freedom means unhappiness and conformity and the submission of individual will to the state means happiness.

D-503 is a mathematician. He is busily engaged working on the construction of a spaceship, the Integral, which will carry the wonderful benefits of "The One State" to those living on distant planets. He keeps a diary to provide a record of his feelings in the weeks before the launch. But into his perfectly well-structured life walks I-330. She evokes in D-503 feelings which he has long suppressed or never knew he had. He falls in love, can't sleep, and starts breaking rules and generally acting like most of us do today. But I-330 is a heretic, an individual who smokes, drinks, loves carnal knowledge and seeks nothing more but the dissolution of the One State. The next thing you know D-503 finds himself on the side of revolution. As the book reaches it climactic moments questions as to the failure or success of the revolution are answered.

WE was a fascinating book to read. Some of the language is a bit dated and Zamyatin's 1921 idea of what the future might look like has been outstripped by the reality the 20th and 21st-centuries. However, the underlying themes of conformity v. freedom and "the state" v the individual still have great contemporary significance that keeps WE as fresh as it was when originally written.

Some have said that WE represented Zamyatin's attack on the oppression of the Soviet system. I would have to disagree. The book was written in 1920 well before the Soviet regime consolidated enough power to be considered a totalitarian society. Further, even though WE contains some reference to the damage caused by regimes such as the fledgling USSR it also contains references (looking back from the 26th-century) to societal ills caused by both capitalism and organized religion. As such, Zamyatin believed in equal opportunity when it came to instruments of oppression.

At the end of the day it seems that what Zamyatin valued most in society were those people willing to play the role of heretic. It certainly was a trait he valued in artists. As he noted in an essay written in 1919:

True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.

Zamyatin was a heretic, a dreamer, and a rebel. WE is a worthy monument to a person who believed that the individual was more important than the state without regard to whether that state had `all life's answers'. WE should be enjoyed by anyone who has read and liked H.G. Wells (who influenced Zamyatin), Huxley, or Orwell. This is a book worth reading.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Mixed Feelings about this Classic September 6, 2007

By MonkeyTurtle

Format:Paperback

I was very excited about reading this book. The premise sounded engaging. This book is remarkable for the time period in which this was written, and that it clearly formed the foundation and inspiration for many dystopian writers to come. The story seems visionary and predictive of many social trends that would follow. For these things, I loved the book.

However, my interest for the story and the writing style waned in the first 100 pages. It started to feel a little slow, and the cryptic style became a little repetitive after awhile. After a fast start, I found my reading pace slowing down to a crawl, and I reluctantly stopped reading. I wanted to enjoy this book much more than I did. Even though I stopped reading, I gave it 4 stars because of the groundbreaking premise and inspiration it provided. The interest clearly hasn't waned for many.

This classic is definitely worth a try - it may well catch fire for you as it has for so many others.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I is We... July 14, 2008

By Mark Nadja VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

The prototype directly or indirectly, acknowledged or unacknowledged of many a subsequent sci-fi dystopia, including Orwell's *1984* and Huxley's *Brave New World,* Zamyatin's *We* is a concise masterpiece that manages in its 200 pages to say everything that needed saying on the subject of the struggle of the individual in the face of the totalitarianism of the collective "good."

The novel is ostensibly the journal of D-503, a literally nameless cypher among millions of others who make up the One State. Here everyone lives in identical glass apartments, all rising together, working together, eating together, and assembling together to give thanks to the Great Benefactor who has bestowed upon them this perfectly synchronous society.

With wit and irony, Zamyatin "proves" the indisputably mathematical rationality of conformity--and the irrationality of freedom. Can you imagine, for instance, anything more irresponsible than leaving to chance the result of an election that would determine who governed the masses? What if every cell in the body decided to follow its own will and fulfill its own purpose--wouldn't the result be cancer? Just so, a society not strictly regulated, where the sum isn't sublimated to the whole, results in chaos and collapse. Happiness is a function of order--just as Plato argued. The One State is the logical conclusion of the principles of order applied to the body politick and represents the greatest good of the greatest number.

In the One State, having a soul is a sickness for which one should seek a cure as quickly as possible--even where it requires a surgical excision of the affected brain tissue. Nature is irrationality itself--and as we seek to control nature as it manifests inside us in passions and appetites, we also seek to overcome Nature outside us through the application of science. In a rudimentary sense, even a tool and shelter-making caveman understood this. In the One State, a great glass wall separates Nature and protects citizens from its hazards and corrupting influence.

D-503 is a true believer in the principles of the One State. How could he not be? He's been brainwashed from birth to accept its truths as self-evident--and, after all, the One State's tenets are proven by mathematics. All is well until he meets and falls in love with a woman who belongs to a revolutionary underground movement. Because for all its perfection, there are still--and always will be--some misguided and sick individuals, a.k.a Enemies of the State. D-503, almost in spite of himself, soon becomes a co-conspirator in the sabotage of an important State project. Love has turned him into a dissident--it has infected him with a soul and deranged his ability to reason. Order or spontaneity? Passion or logic? Fact or imagination? D-503 is torn between what he's always believed and what he now begins to feel. He is regressing back to an earlier, more primitive, form of man. He, too, is now an enemy of the state, of the common good, of common sense. He is guilty of putting I ahead of We.

None of what Zamyatin has done in *We* will be unfamiliar to readers of *1984* or any science fiction dystopia in book or film since--but the fact remains that Zamyatin did it first, and, in many ways, better than Orwell and the rest. Zamyatin has a condensed, visually vivid, and inventive prose style--at least as its translated in this edition of *We*--that is startlingly fresh, immediate, and modern; it often appropriates the richness and rewards--as well as the challenges--of reading poetry.

*We* is one of those essential and universal "Great Books," a testament that deals with the big questions of what it means to be alive. Although written as a satire on Communism with Stalin disguised as the Great Benefactor and the Soviet Union as the One State, Zamyatin's *We* is as timeless as oppression itself and the equally timeless struggle of the individual to resist it. One recognizes all-too-much of the One State in our own supposedly "free and democratic" system. For as Goethe once wrote, as if seeing into the future, "There are none so enslaved as those who think they're free."

Chilling, beautiful, disturbing, thought-provoking, *We* is one of those unforgettable forgotten books well worth remembering.