1984

by George Orwell

Composed 75 years ago, 1984 was George Orwell's haunting prediction of the future. Though 1984 has passed, his dystopian vision of a government intent on controlling the narrative remains eerily relevant today...

Unknown Binding

About the author

Eric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism (both fascism and stalinism), and support of democratic socialism.

Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.

Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime". In 2008, The Times named Orwell the second-greatest British writer since 1945.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somehow I managed to get to midlife without having ever read this highly referenced novel, so I decided it was time. I found particularly resonant Orwell's examination of his dystopian society's fraught relationship with the truth and history, given what we're seeing develop in the political culture of 2025 America. It's as if he had a window into the future and was able to predict much of what we're experiencing today in terms of a rightward shift in politics around the world. But perhaps even more than this aspect of the novel, what I found surprising was how readable of a novel it really is. I found Orwell to be genuinely fun to read, with his sentences rolling elegantly off the page.

[Clay Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holy shit. It is so disturbing in such an eye opening way. The most disturbing part is not even the grotesque visuals and graphic scenes but the change within Winston himself; the final sentence of the book made my stomach churn. There are times where it feels like the book is repeating the message in a repetitive way over and over again and feels like it’s more pushing the message with dialogue and explanations and not actions, but it is worth a read and EXTREMELY important at any point in time but especially right now. I can see why it’s a classic (and also why is banned 😬)

[Pablo · Rating 4 out of 5]

No recuerdo las sensaciones que tuve al leerlo por primera vez, pero en esta relectura no podía parar de pensar que 1984 está lleno de paralelismos con la realidad del s.XXI, a pesar de estar escrito hace casi 80 años: la manipulación de la realidad, la vigilancia constante con telepantallas que saben todo lo que hacemos (que parecería un disparate en su día, y hoy es una realidad en tamaño reducido y portátil), el ambiente bélico que acaba convirtiendo a aliados en enemigos y viceversa, ese “doblepensar”… Tan real todo, que duele.