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Nineteen Eighty-Four Hardcover – November 3, 1992
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Winston Smith spends his days rewriting history to fit the narrative that his government wants citizens to believe. But as the gap between the propaganda he writes and the reality he lives proves too much for Winston to swallow, he begins to seek some form of escape. His desperate struggle to free himself from an all-encompassing, tyrannical state illuminates the tendencies apparent in every modern society, and makes vivid the universal predicament of the individual.
Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Lexile measure900L
- Dimensions5.23 x 1.05 x 8.27 inches
- PublisherEveryman's Library
- Publication dateNovember 3, 1992
- ISBN-100679417397
- ISBN-13978-0679417392
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“A profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating book…Orwell’s theory of power is developed brilliantly.” –The New Yorker
“A book that goes through the reader like an east wind, cracking the skin…Such are the originality, the suspense, the speed of writing, and withering indignation that it is impossible to put the book down.” –V. S. Pritchett
“Orwell’ s novel escorts us so quietly, so directly, and so dramatically from our own day to the fate which may be ours in the future, that the experience is a blood-chilling one.” –Saturday Review
From the Back Cover
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
George Orwell's life as a writer falls distinctly into two parts, and it happens that he himself dated the change precisely. On 20 August 1939, the night before Stalin's Soviet Union signed a pact of friendship with Hitler's Germany, Orwell dreamed that the war expected by all adults of his generation had begun, and realized that 'I was patriotic at heart, would not sabotage or act against my own side, would support the war, would fight in it if possible.' His dream anticipated the reality of war by no more than a couple of weeks, and although Orwell's health made it impossible for him to enter the armed forces, he supported the aims of the war and was opposed to a negotiated peace.
The decision was a contradiction of much he had said and written up to that time. Only a couple of months earlier he had expressed the view that the British and French so-called democracies were 'in essence nothing but mechanisms for exploiting cheap labour', and had said the only hope of saving Britain from either foreign or home-grown Fascist rule was the emergence of a mass party whose first pledges would be 'to refuse war and to right imperial injustice'. In a letter that must have alarmed the art critic and peaceful anarchist Herbert Read who received it, he suggested that those who were both anti-war and anti-Fascist should buy and secrete printing presses in what he called 'some discreet place' so that they would be ready for the issue ofrevolutionary pamphlets when the time came.
So Orwell was inconsistent: but then his life up to that night in August 1939 had been a pattern of changes in attitude marking changed beliefs. He was born in Bengal in 1903 as Eric Arthur Blair, the only male child (he had an older and younger sister) of a civil servant in the Opium Department of the Indian government. Like many children of what he later called the 'lower-upper-middle class' he was sent as a boarder to a preparatory school, named St Cyprian's, where by an autobiographical account written not long before his death he was very unhappy. The scholarship that took him to Eton did not change his belief that the prime necessities for success in life were 'money, athleticism, tailor-made clothes and a charming smile', and that he possessed none of these attributes, being weak, ugly, unpopular and cowardly. That was not the view of Eton contemporaries like Cyril Connolly, who saw Orwell not as an outcast but a rebel. Yet the teenage rebel retained respect for the standards engendered by St Cyprian's and Eton, and a feeling that may be called sentimental or patriotic for the British Empire. He served five years in Burma with the Imperial Police, and did so by choice and not compulsion, although he said later that 'I hated the imperialism I was serving with a bitterness that I cannot make clear.'
There is no doubt that he ended by hating it, and he was not a man who did things by halves. After turning away from the Imperialist ideal he tried without much success to involve himself with the poorest and most wretched groups in society. 'At that time failure seemed to me the only virtue', and in pursuit of failure he spent some weeks with hop-pickers, lived briefly with tramps, and tried to get himself put in prison as a drunk. He lived for eighteen months in Paris, writing without much commercial success, and the record of that time, Down and Out in Paris and London was his first published book. He was not proud of or very pleased with the result, and decided to use a pseudonym rather than his given name. He suggested four possibilities to the publisher Victor Gollancz, saying 'I rather favour George Orwell.' Gollancz favoured it too, and early in 1933 the name George Orwell came into existence via a book jacket. Thereafter, while early friends continued to call him Eric, later ones like me knew him only as George.
Orwell's career after Down and Out and in the years before the war shows the uncertainties, confusions, fresh starts and false starts almost inescapable for anybody who became seriously involved in Left-wing politics during that very political decade. In that time he published four novels which had reasonable sales and reviews but no outstanding success, and The Road to Wigan Pier. The first part of this commissioned book, which dealt with the hard life of miners, was much approved by the Left intelligentsia, but the second caused shock waves of disapproval for its attack on what Orwell called 'the dreary tribe of high-minded women and sandal wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers' who were magnetically drawn to Socialism and the magical word progress 'like bluebottles to a dead cat'.
The Spanish Civil War took him to Spain to fight for the Republic, and his experience there was the basis of his finest work during the decade. Homage to Catalonia appeared in 1938 in an edition of only 1 ,500 copies, 600 of them still unsold when he died in 1950. The story of his life during the thirties might be called 'the education of a Socialist', from the first blundering attempts to understand the poor by living with or like them, through a high-minded period of linking himself with a political party (in Orwell's case the splinter group the Independent Labour Party), into the full understanding of the noble idealism and bitter internecine hatreds within groups that called themselves Socialist, as they were demonstrated to him during his months in Spain. In 1947 he said:
Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it ... Looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably when I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.
It is no wonder that at the time he regarded the Spanish experience as a turning point in his attitude towards society, yet there was one more lesson still to learn. He emerged from Spain an apparent revolutionary, as we have seen in the call for a mass anti-war party and preparation for guerrilla warfare. Yet such a thesis went against the deepest impulses of his nature, the love of his country, its people, customs and landscape, that was the emotional basis of his personality. An understanding of this prompted the final realization of what Eric Blair/George Orwell truly believed: that it was necessary for the war to be fought, with Socialism the end to be achieved when it had been won. By the side of that went the obligation to expose the deceits and villainous practices of Communist parties, as he had seen them in Spain and imagined them in the Soviet Union. He did not stray from those purposes in the last decade of his life.
*
Because George Orwell is now so famous, with all the books consistently appearing in new editions, and the adjective Orwellian stamped on the mind of every politician and leaderwriter for use once a week, it is well to be reminded of the way in which he was regarded during most of his life. Had he died in 1939 (something quite possible, for his health was never good) he would be remembered now as a maverick with some lively but highly eccentric opinions that need not be considered seriously. And if his life had been cut off before his last decade that would not have been an unreasonable view, for the achievements up to then had been minor. The account of life as a plongeur in Down and Out, the description of going down a mine in Wigan Pier and much of Homage To Catalonia have the extraordinary directness of his finest writing, but there are elements in the first two books that leave a sense of the writer being selective, not telling us all the facts of the case.
We know now that this was so, that he could have escaped from the squalor of the down and out life earlier than he did, and that some details of his Wigan experiences were not exactly reported. A passage in The Road to Wigan Pier describes how, from the train that took him away from the town, he saw a girl kneeling on the stones in the backyard of a little slum house. She was pushing a stick up a blocked waste pipe, and her face wore 'the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever seen'. The image is a powerful one, the actual incident described in Orwell's diary much less so. In fact he saw the girl walking up a squalid alley, she was not clearing a blocked pipe and he was not in a train. Perhaps this only matters if we are looking for the literal accuracy expected of (but rarely found in) newspaper reporting. There can be no doubt that in these books, and to a lesser extent in Homage To Catalonia, Orwell is presenting reality heightened for emotional effect. Something similar can be said of much writing based on things seen, and later set down for literary effect.
The fiction of the thirties reveals his limitations as a novelist, in particular an inability to imagine characters outside his own direct experience. Burmese Days is primarily interesting in the light of the author's reactions to the country, and Keep The Aspidistra Flying as an echo of Orwell's own hard times, with the other characters not much more than shadows. This book may have been influenced by Gissing, whose portraits of Victorian lower-class London Orwell greatly admired, as A Clergyman's Daughter was influenced - and damaged - by his reading of Ulysses. The novels as a whole produce their undoubtedly powerful effect through the intensity with which the writer communicates his feelings about Imperial Burma and depression Britain, but in terms of character and incident they are not successful books. When Coming Up For Air was reprinted in 1947 he sent me a copy. I suggested that a good many of the opinions and thoughts and feelings attributed to George Bowling were really those of George Orwell, and he replied:
Of course you are perfectly right about my own character constantly intruding on that of the narrator. I am not a real novelist anyway ... One difficulty I have never solved is that one has masses of experience which one passionately wants to write about, e g. the part about fishing in that-book, and no way of using them up except by disguising them as a novel.
I am not a real novelist anyway: it was through acceptance of this fact that Orwell came to realize the nature of his genius, and to fulfil it in the two great moral fables, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Product details
- Publisher : Everyman's Library; First Edition (November 3, 1992)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0679417397
- ISBN-13 : 978-0679417392
- Reading age : 16+ years, from customers
- Lexile measure : 900L
- Item Weight : 1.15 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.23 x 1.05 x 8.27 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #44,560 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #713 in Dystopian Fiction (Books)
- #1,695 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #3,905 in Literary Fiction (Books)
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About the authors

George Orwell is one of England's most famous writers and social commentators. Among his works are the classic political satire Animal Farm and the dystopian nightmare vision Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell was also a prolific essayist, and it is for these works that he was perhaps best known during his lifetime. They include Why I Write and Politics and the English Language. His writing is at once insightful, poignant and entertaining, and continues to be read widely all over the world.
Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) was born in 1903 in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. The family moved to England in 1907 and in 1917 Orwell entered Eton, where he contributed regularly to the various college magazines. From 1922 to 1927 he served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, an experience that inspired his first novel, Burmese Days (1934). Several years of poverty followed. He lived in Paris for two years before returning to England, where he worked successively as a private tutor, schoolteacher and bookshop assistant, and contributed reviews and articles to a number of periodicals. Down and Out in Paris and London was published in 1933. In 1936 he was commissioned by Victor Gollancz to visit areas of mass unemployment in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) is a powerful description of the poverty he saw there.
At the end of 1936 Orwell went to Spain to fight for the Republicans and was wounded. Homage to Catalonia is his account of the civil war. He was admitted to a sanatorium in 1938 and from then on was never fully fit. He spent six months in Morocco and there wrote Coming Up for Air. During the Second World War he served in the Home Guard and worked for the BBC Eastern Service from 1941 to 1943. As literary editor of the Tribune he contributed a regular page of political and literary commentary, and he also wrote for the Observer and later for the Manchester Evening News. His unique political allegory, Animal Farm was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which brought him world-wide fame.
It was around this time that Orwell's unique political allegory Animal Farm (1945) was published. The novel is recognised as a classic of modern political satire and is simultaneously an engaging story and convincing allegory. It was this novel, together with Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which finally brought him world-wide fame. Nineteen Eighty-Four's ominous depiction of a repressive, totalitarian regime shocked contemporary readers, but ensures that the book remains perhaps the preeminent dystopian novel of modern literature.
Orwell's fiercely moral writing has consistently struck a chord with each passing generation. The intense honesty and insight of his essays and non-fiction made Orwell one of the foremost social commentators of his age. Added to this, his ability to construct elaborately imaginative fictional worlds, which he imbued with this acute sense of morality, has undoubtedly assured his contemporary and future relevance.
George Orwell died in London in January 1950.

Author shows rich interest in Political Philosophers and their Philosophies. Book "Political Philosophers and Philosophies" is his first short E-Book available on Amazon Kindle.
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'Slowly,' said Syme. "I'm on the abjectives. It's fascinating.'
He had brightened up immediately at the mention of Newspeak ...
'The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition,' he said. ' We're getting the language into its final shape -- the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words -- scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won't contain a singe word that will become obsolete before the year 2050 ...
'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words' ...
'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.' "
- George Orwell, '1984'
"Logic, therefore, as the science thought, or the science of the process of pure reason, should be capable of being constructed a priori."
-Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Controversy
("a priori" is defined as deduced from self-evident premises)
By revealing the concept of "Newspeak" in his great dystopian novel '1984', George Orwell, while dying of tuberculosis, cryptically attempted to expose to the world one of the great crimes of government against humanity; the systematic suppression/subversion of essential tools of reasoning; both in language and science. Central to this crime is the deliberate suppression of the science of formal logic. (Formal logic, invented by Aristotle in the fourth century B.C., is the science of evaluating arguments in order to determine if they are correctly reasoned. ) I will fully explain.
You see, the masses haven't been taught formal logic by State controlled public schools or media for many generations. (In his book ' The Underground History of American Education' John Taylor Gatto informs his readers that this deliberate dumbing down of the population through State controlled schools was adopted nationwide just after the completion of the U.S. Civil War.) Don't believe me? Just go out and ask some average U.S. adults how to determine if a deductive argument is both valid and sound; or the difference between a formal and an informal logical fallacy. (Both are very basic and essential knowledge of formal logic.) You'll find that not one in twenty have any idea. This is not an accident.
The terrible and murderous lies of our governments rely upon the masses being misinformed, ignorant, and intellectually crippled. And our State controlled schools and media have done this job very well, I'm sorry to say.
"Ignorance is strength."-George Orwell, 1984
The list of criminal conspiracies, committed by the oligarchs who control our governments, are difficult for most people to psychologically accept. They include the subversion of free systems of government, fraud, illegal war, and genocide on an almost unimaginable scale. Here are a few for which the available evidence is simply overwhelming:
(1) Arab terrorists did not carry out the attacks of September 11, 2001.
(2) Man never walked on the moon.
(3) HIV does not, and never did cause AIDS, and our governments have always been aware of this fact.
(4) JFK was not murdered by a lone assassin.
(5) The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which justified U.S. entry into the Vietnam War was a hoax.
(6) The homicidal cyanide gas chambers of the holocaust are a fraud, devised by the Allies to dehumanize the German enemy, and generate support for the people and state of Israel. The Germans never murdered anyone with cyanide gas.
There are many, many more bloody lies, as you will see, if only you will accept George Orwell' s invitation to finally become conscious.
"If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within... But the proles, if only somehow they could become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet--!"
-George Orwell, 1984
-------------------------------------------------------
Here are few quote/definitions regarding formal logic that I hope you will find useful.
"Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong."
-Thomas Jefferson
"We ought in fairness to fight our case with no help beyond the bare facts: nothing, therefore, should matter except the proof of those facts."
-Aristotle, Rhetoric
"The truth or falsity of a statement depends on facts, not on any power on the part of the statement itself of admitting contrary qualities".
-Aristotle, Categories
"We suppose ourselves to posses unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing, as opposed to knowing it in the accidental way in which the sophist knows, when we think that we know the cause on which the fact depends, as the cause of that fact and of no other, and further, that the fact could not be other than it is"
-Aristotle, Posterior Analytics
"The province of Logic must be restricted to that portion of our knowledge which consists of inferences from truths previously known; whether those antecedent data be general propositions, or particular observations and perceptions. Logic is not the science of Belief, but the science of Proof, or Evidence. In so far as belief professes to be founded on proof, the office of Logic is to supply a test for ascertaining whether or not the belief is well grounded."
-John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic (1843)
"Fallacious reasoning is just the opposite of what can be called cogent reasoning. We reason cogently when we reason (1) validly; (2) from premises well supported by evidence; and (3) using all relevant evidence we know of. The purpose of avoiding fallacious reasoning is, of course, to increase our chances of reasoning cogently."
-Howard Kahane, Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric, 1976, second edition
"The fallacy of suppressed evidence is committed when an arguer ignores evidence that would tend to undermine the premises of an otherwise good argument, causing it to be unsound or uncogent. Suppressed evidence is a fallacy of presumption and is closely related to begging the question. As such, it's occurrence does not affect the relationship between premises and conclusion but rather the alleged truth of premises. The fallacy consists in passing off what are at best half-truths as if they were whole truths, thus making what is actually a defective argument appear to be good. The fallacy is especially common among arguers who have a vested interest in the situation ttho which the argument pertains."
-Patrick Hurley, A Concise Introduction to Logic (1985)
"Aristotle devides all conclusions into logical and dialectical, in the manner described, and then into eristical. (3) Eristic is the method by which the form of the conclusion is correct, but the premises, the material from which it is drawn, are not true, but only appear to be true. Finally (4) sophistic is the method in which the form of the conclusion is false, although it seems correct. These three last properly belong to the art of Controversial Dialectic, as they have no objective truth in view, but only the appearance of it, and pay no regard to truth itself; that is to say, they aim at victory."
-Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Controversy
"The hypothesis most likely to prove right must do the following: 1. Include all known facts; 2. Not over-emphasize any part of the evidence at the expense of the rest; 3. Observe the laws of probability as established by previous investigation; 4. Avoid logical contradictions; 5. Stay as simple as possible without ignoring any part of the evidence. Hypotheses which violate any one of these requirements are Forced Hypotheses."
-James Johnson, Logic and Rhetoric (1968)
"This is the argumentum ad verecundiam. It consists in making an appeal to authority rather than reason, and in using such an authority as may suit the degree of knowledge possessed by your opponent.
Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment, says Seneca; and it is therefore an easy matter if you have an authority on your side which your opponent respects. The more limited his capacity and knowledge, the greater is the number of authorities who weigh with him. But if his capacity and knowledge are of a high order, there are very few; indeed, hardly any at all. He may, perhaps, admit the authority of professional men versed in science or an art or a handicraft of which he knows little or nothing; but even so he will regard it with suspicion. Contrarily, ordinary folk have a deep respect for professional men of every kind. They are unaware that a man who makes a profession of a thing loves it not for the thing itself, but for the money he makes by it; or that it is rare for a man who teaches to know his subject thoroughly; for if he studies it as he ought, he has in most cases no time left in which to teach it...
There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted. Example effects their thought just as it affects their action. They are like sheep following the bell-wether just as he leads them. They will sooner die than think. It is very curious that the universality of an opinion should have so much weight with people, as their own experience might tell them that it's acceptance is an entirely thoughtless and merely imitative process. But it tells them nothing of the kind, because they possess no self-knowledge whatever...
When we come to look into the matter, so-called universal opinion is the opinion of two or three persons; and we should be persuaded of this if we could see the way in which it really arises.
We should find that it is two or three persons who, in the first instance, accepted it, or advanced and maintained it; and of whom people were so good as to believe that they had thoroughly tested it. Then a few other persons, persuaded beforehand that the first were men of the requisite capacity, also accepted the opinion. These, again, were trusted by many others, whose laziness suggested to them that it was better to believe at once, than to go through the troublesome task of testing the matter for themselves. Thus the number of these lazy and credulous adherents grew from day to day; for the opinion had no sooner obtained a fair measure of support than its further supporters attributed this to the fact that the opinion could only have obtained it by the cogency of its arguments. The remainder were then compelled to grant what was universally granted, so as not to pass for unruly persons who resisted opinions which everyone accepted, or pert fellows who thought themselves cleverer than any one else.
When opinion reaches this stage, adhesion becomes a duty; and henceforward the few who are capable of forming a judgment hold their peace. Those who venture to speak are such as are entirely incapable of forming any opinion or any judgment of their own, being merely the echo of others' opinions; and, nevertheless, they defend them with all the greater zeal and intolerance. For what they hate in people who think differently is not so much the different opinions which they profess, as the presumption of wanting to form their own judgment; a presumption of which they themselves are never guilty, as they are very well aware. In short, there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?
Since this is what happens, where is the value of the opinion even of a hundred millions? It is no more established than an historical fact reported by a hundred chroniclers who can be proved to have plagiarised it from one another; the opinion in the end being traceable to a single individual."
-Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Controversy (1831)
If you haven’t read this book since you were required to read it in high school or college, many years or decades ago, it’s extremely worthwhile to read it again. Much has happened since you last read it. You’ve also changed you’re own perspective.
I last read it in high school in 1974, but was recently motivated to read it again after reading Anne Applebaum’s fantastic book, Iron Curtain, which reconstructs, from the everyday-person’s point of view, how after WW II, the Soviet Union conquered Eastern Europe and wiped out civil society in Eastern Europe after conquering it. I’ve heard the phrase “dystopian world” used to describe this book, and I disagree. This book is a clear reaction to and comment on the Soviet takeover of it’s own country and especially Eastern Europe that was occurring while Orwell wrote.
Orwell, who I just learned died young at age 46 years old, just a few years after the book came out in 1949, wrote this book in 1947 in the middle of that take over, and it is interesting to read it again, 75 years later, to hear Orwell’s thoughts on what was occurring, as it was occurring anew.
As I am writing this in 2023, Russia is trying to wipe out Ukrainian culture, saying it never was a country, systematically bombing its museums and cultural buildings and television towers, forcing residents to use Russian money and passports, and forcing schools in Ukraine to only use the Russian language and Russian textbooks. The Wagner group story in Russian is being changed.
In Russia there isn’t a television screen in everyone’s home, like a bathroom mirror, as depicted in the book, but, not too far off the mark, everyone is on the internet, and the Russian thought police certainly monitors what people type and post.
I do have to say that for the last few hours of the book, I just waited to get it done with…the extended torture scenes where Orwell shows us how torturing Winston brainwashes him, the long appendix where the narrator goes over the 1984 dictionary, the idea of a permanent war with minimal true destruction as a way of controlling the population.
I thought it was interesting that the book is premised on a nuclear war happening in the 1950’s, and the world being broken up into Russian, USA/British, and China spheres of influence—-actually not too far from where we are now, minus the nuclear war, assuming Ukraine doesn’t heat up. It is interesting that Russia has survived as a thought-controlling type of government. This was likely all new when Orwell wrote 1984 back in 1947.
Lastly, as I am a lot more experienced compared with when I read this book in high school in 1974, I can now appreciate Orwell’s severe sarcasm. Orwell is not quite funny, but very frequently I found myself smirking and shaking my head.
I did the audiobook, and Simon Prebble did well.
As a parting thought, in our capitalist society our every thought is monitored by companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, and then sold and used to make money and manipulate what we do and think. Much of this information is also searchable by our own government under search warrant. Congressional hearings about this are currently underway. Don’t mistake me, I’m far from saying anything positive about Russia, but just saying….
"Newspeak" is a language invented by the Party in 1984, and currently there are terms and abbreviations invented to signify one's membership or lack of membership in a group. "Oldspeak" or the old way of speaking has been snuffed out in the novel to the extent that documents from the past can no longer be read; one wonders if a parallel to this is the removal of cursive from many curriculums (most foundational documents are in cursive).
All of these are just a glimpse of the relevance of 1984. It's a must read!
"Telescreens" are a tool of indoctrination and conditioning in the novel, but currently people are increasingly getting their information from heavily biased social media platforms. Critical thinking and literacy have slowly been extinguished by algorithms and entertainment sources.
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Orwell's prose is both captivating and haunting, drawing readers into the life of Winston Smith as he navigates a world where individuality and freedom are suppressed. The themes presented are strikingly relevant even today, prompting introspection about the state of society, politics, and personal autonomy. The characters are expertly crafted, evoking empathy and contemplation, while the plot's twists and turns keep you hooked from start to finish.
"1984" isn't merely a novel; it's a wake-up call that challenges us to question authority and safeguard our liberties. If you're seeking a book that stimulates your intellect, elicits deep conversations, and lingers in your thoughts long after you've turned the final page, then George Orwell's "1984" is an essential addition to your reading list.
There were two niggles with this particular version. The first was the fact that any numbers spelled out (eg, Nineteen eighty-four) were shown in the text but there were blank spaced where it appeared that there should be numbers, presumably written in numerals (eg 1984). From reading the book, it was clear that there should be numbers (either referring to quotas, percentages or years) and you had to use your imagination. For example, there was one reference to the infamous "Room one-oh-one" which was actually there, but in the end, Winston was sent to "Room ". A common theme is also what the sum two plus two equals, and at the end, Winston traces in the dust (apparently) "+="
The other niggle was the formatting. Clearly it had had words hyphenated and carriage returns placed to allow the text to be justified, but on my kindle this meant that I had hyphenated words appearing in the middle of the line and lines with a couple of words before the sentence continued in the next paragraph.
All in all, only a minor nuisance but did distract me as I was reading through. I've reported all the missing numbers as I've gone through, so the customer service representatives will be cursing me, but hopefully it will be updated so others can enjoy the book without distractions.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 5, 2023
There were two niggles with this particular version. The first was the fact that any numbers spelled out (eg, Nineteen eighty-four) were shown in the text but there were blank spaced where it appeared that there should be numbers, presumably written in numerals (eg 1984). From reading the book, it was clear that there should be numbers (either referring to quotas, percentages or years) and you had to use your imagination. For example, there was one reference to the infamous "Room one-oh-one" which was actually there, but in the end, Winston was sent to "Room ". A common theme is also what the sum two plus two equals, and at the end, Winston traces in the dust (apparently) "+="
The other niggle was the formatting. Clearly it had had words hyphenated and carriage returns placed to allow the text to be justified, but on my kindle this meant that I had hyphenated words appearing in the middle of the line and lines with a couple of words before the sentence continued in the next paragraph.
All in all, only a minor nuisance but did distract me as I was reading through. I've reported all the missing numbers as I've gone through, so the customer service representatives will be cursing me, but hopefully it will be updated so others can enjoy the book without distractions.



















