Author: Orwell, George
Binding: pod_paperback
Number Of Pages: 320
Release Date: 19-06-2023
Details: George Orwell’s classic work, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was published in 1949 in the shadow of Nazi totalitarianism. Two months later, the Soviet Union would detonate its first atomic bomb and for fifty more years would be the world’s totalitarian superpower.
Orwell knew that although Nazism and Communism raged against each other, they were mirror images. Perpetual war, mass surveillance, propaganda, the revision of history, government control over words and thoughts, compliance and conformity — these are the traits of all totalitarian dictatorships. And if you look closely, you can see traces of those same things in our democracies, too.
The book is a futuristic novel but it is surprisingly accurate. The Cold War exile Czesław Miłosz reported that Communist Party officials in Poland read secret copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four and marvelled that someone who had never lived under a dictatorship could have such a clear perception of it. What a compliment to the author: his illegal book was secretly read by party insiders. Which just happens to be a plot line in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Orwell didn't just describe totalitarianism as it was but as it would be. His description of “telescreens” — an always-on TV set that didn’t just broadcast to you, but spied on you, too — is an eerie premonition of the spyware in our own smartphones and social media. Big Brother really is watching us. Orwell couldn’t have imagined today’s technology but he could imagine something more important: the human instinct to rule and control.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a book about language, too. Newspeak, an engineered language designed to limit the ability to talk and even think independently, has become reality now with our speech codes and woke euphemisms. Today people really are fired for thoughtcrimes. Police really do investigate people for writing political thoughts on Facebook.
It was an important book during the Cold War, to warn us of the Soviets and other dictatorships. But Nineteen Eighty-Four is equally a warning about tyrants today. There are elements of Big Brother in our other Bigs, including Big Tech, Big Pharma and Big Media. Corporate totalitarianism would have shocked but not surprised Orwell.
These days Nineteen Eighty-Four has become a household term and Orwellian has become a ubiquitous adjective. But the sharpness of those ideas has been dulled by overuse and misuse. In 1984, Apple introduced its new personal computer with an iconic TV commercial of a rogue athlete smashing an image of Big Brother. Today Apple is itself accused of working with authoritarian regimes to control and crush political opposition. Understanding totalitarianism is more important than ever. Re-reading this original work is part of that.
It’s an important book. And until now, it has never been presented so beautifully. Most popular editions of Nineteen Eighty-Four are typeset in a small and cramped way. And none have been as beautifully and hauntingly illustrated as the Rebel News Classic version, painstakingly prepared by master illustrator Paul Rivoche. This is a book that can be on the bookshelf, a student’s desk, or a living room coffee table as a conversation piece.
The purpose of this edition is to make reading Nineteen Eighty-Four a beautiful experience and to make it welcoming to a new generation of readers who don’t read much and who frankly prefer movies and video games to reading classic literature. This new version is a perfect republication of Orwell’s original masterpiece — not a word has been added or taken away. But it is presented in a visually inviting manner that will engross young and old readers alike.
EAN: 9781990583018
Package Dimensions: 9.0 x 6.0 x 0.8 inches
Languages: English
