1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four (Penguin Modern Classics)

1984 is one of those rare novels that feels just as urgent today as when it was written. Orwell’s vision of a dystopian future — complete with mass surveillance, thought control, and rewritten history — is both unsettling and thought-provoking. The prose is direct and stark, but never dull. The world-building is incredibly detailed, and the character of Winston Smith gives the story an emotional weight that makes the philosophical ideas hit harder. "Big Brother," "doublethink," and "thoughtcrime" have become part of modern language for a reason. The Penguin edition is well-printed and comfortable to read, with good paper quality and clear type. An essential read for anyone interested in politics, media, or the psychology of control.

In 1984, Orwell relates the depressing story of Winston Smith, a doomed citizen living in Airstrip One (formerly known as London), a poverty-ridden dystopia ruled over by The Party: a city where those who show signs of independent thought vanish in the night, where gigantic telescreens monitor Winston's every move, where he must scratch a living on what The Party provides, working a job rewriting old newspapers in The Party's favour while clinging to his sanity through tiny acts of secret rebellion. The first of these acts is to purchase and write in a diary, and later to meet a female Party member in private (marriage is formally controlled by The Party, and is strictly for the sole purpose of reproduction). It is only when he finds true happiness and apparent haven from the eyes of the Thought Police that The Party choose to act, arresting him and subjecting him to a torture too cruel and lasting to imagine: one that destroys him in a more important way than death ever could. As harrowing as Winston's despair-ridden tale is, it's the sheer relevance of the world he inhabits that makes the book such a joy to read in the 21st century. With our highly-filtered and biased news reports, a network of CCTV cameras watching us in city centres, tax on our products feeding the government money and censoring laws and activists stifling free speech, comparisons to 1984 are inevitable. In the world of 1984, people are robbed of personal freedom, brainwashed, abducted, tortured, gradually starved, lied to and killed, and the truly terrifying result of The Party's efforts is that there exists no material proof of their crimes. The book illuminates the darkest eventuality of politics and government control, and makes it feel that bit too real for comfort. Orwell's writing has not aged noticeably - I had no problem reading it, and I'm all of seventeen, so most readers will fly through it. If anything, however, some may find the writing style too coarse or simple: Orwell never entirely escapes the analytical style so well-suited to his essays, and in places the book lacks emotion and descriptive flair. In particular, the female protagonist is painfully shallow, never extending very far beyond a "Hello, Dear!" persona. At one point, Orwell also diverts away from the main story and dedicates a large portion of writing to a book within the story, one that Winston is reading, which should be interesting but is annoyingly long-winded and detracts from the main story. Overall, though, 1984 is profound and chilling. It is a timeless tale of man vs state, and may be uplifting or depressing depending on the individual reader. At any rate, the countless parallels to modern culture make it interesting, and the arguments of logic between Winston and an Inner Party Member will give budding philosophers food for thought. Political enthusiasts will also find issues to chew over, and fans of popular culture may pick up on some unlikely links; musicians, authors and directors in years since have taken heaps of inspiration from the book: the iconic expression "a rebel from the waist down", made famous by a Marilyn Manson song, finds its roots here, alongside the concept of Big Brother and the inspiration of the video game Half-Life 2. Something for everybody.

Warning: contains spoiler This perhaps is not a book to be loved as the purpose of a dystopian novel is to warn us of what it could have been before it is too late. That is to say the story does not try to appeal to us but to repel us. The book does have its momentum and it is quite easy to turn the pages till the end. The world, though in simplified caricature, bears resemblance to our reality in some parts of the world, even today. It does highlights what is necessary for a totalitarian regime to survive. Whether they are universal features it is hard to establish. But from what we can observe in experience, what are highlighted in the book seem to match. The book calls for lamentation of our world. The degeneration and deterioration, and the final abolition of man is startling. Yet the mass can be sleepwalking into it, and a couple of generations down the line, the mass would not even have the ability to discern what has been done. This is because the "authority" does not just try to control the mind but seeks to mould the thinking process that will ultimately eliminate our intellectual power to think independent. This tyranny does not just come from a totalitarian regime but ironically in today's ultra-liberal post-modern world which serves the function of dismantling the objective truth that exists out there, and replaces it with relative and subjective truth that exists in our mind. Will it be one day personally too painful or too costly to try to insist on the truth and to reconcile the contradictory systems of values? The key conflict confronted a sane mind as embodied in the main protagonist Winston is this erasure of absolute objective truth that exists outside our mind. It seems to argue that the existence of such unwavering truths, known or unknown, are crucial to our well-being. They are our anchor points, being cut off from which we would become floating ghosts who could be erased as if we had never existed because we could be erased from records and memory. There is no longer any standard to arbitrate the truth. There is also the conflict arising from the non-reconcilable concepts that exist side by side to be held as truth. It gives us a feeling of queasiness. Our mind does not naturally accepts that, unless we give up thinking and perceiving - this is the end point where the regime was forcing upon its population eventually, as this will be the only way to stay sane in the insane world. This social schizophrenia happens around us not just in totalitarian regime but also in ultra pluralist society when internally contradictory values are hailed side by side, and tolerance does not mean an attitude to live with different opinions but to coerce public opinion into conformity. Are we heading to a dystopian state anyhow, whether in the free world or under the authoritarian regimes? The mutilation of language is an effective tool to make people dumb. The author expends quite a lot of effort to strike home this point. As a writer, Orwell must love and master the language. He shows us his insights into the relationship between language and the thinking power. The deteriorating language ability of any population therefore is a worrying sign. He points out that reducing the size of vocabulary will purge concepts and ideas; without the words, people can't think them. That is true, and Orwell made a concerted effort in deriving the Newspeak to illustrate the point. However, in the modern day, we see another trend that will reduce people's power to think - that is the ability to string words together. As the argument goes, disjointed and choppy sentences are not conducive to developing thought or a probing mind. Modern form of communication which relies on text messages, social media posting, which stresses images more than words could have far more long-lasting, damaging impact on the reasoning power of the general public than at first glance. The last part of the book is on the process of brainwashing. As Orwell had no first hand experience (I assume), I believe the depiction was from his conjecture. I personally do not know how realistic it is. I do not know whether it was successful brainwashing techniques or just PTSD at the end of the day, after a lengthy period of gruesome trauma and torment - physical, psychological, emotional, mental, intellectual and finally metaphysical. Winston was hard to break, as his tormentor said. I could follow the internal struggle upto the point before Room 101. I understand what happened in Room 101. But how did he turn from hating Big Brother to loving him is unclear to me. The swap was not clear except that he was totally broken. How then was the positive affection generated? I can understand why Winston might hate himself, but is it the same as loving Big Brother?Or loving Big Brother (and believing his values and function) makes it easier not to hate himself? Or simply when one was so broke, it did not matter who is right who is wrong what is true and what is false? Or was the execution that came as a release after such a horrendous struggle that he love Big Brother for granting the merciful bullet into his head? I don't know.

High quality book manufacturing. Very aesthetically pleasing.

Quality is good too but the drawings on cover are wearing a little, but hey! Don't judge book by it's cover right? 😉 seriously though, good novel.

I've read it a few times but didn't have a copy of it and decided to get this beautiful edition. Really well bound and the book quality is great. * this I consider to be a book that everyone must read at least once!!! * It is brilliant and quite scary!

Le livre est beau, comme j'ai espéré. Je suis content

You can never go wrong with reading about dystopian societies as pictured from a post-WWII era. This is becoming all too common in the modern day. Especially in Europe and Asia.