A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick With extraordinary relevance and renewed popularity, George Orwell’s 1984 takes on new life in this edition. “Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power.”—The New Yorker In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where … city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.
Lionel Trilling said of Orwell’s masterpiece, “1984 is a profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating book. It is a fantasy of the political future, and like any such fantasy, serves its author as a magnifying device for an examination of the present.” Though the year 1984 now exists in the past, Orwell’s novel remains an urgent call for the individual willing to speak truth to power.
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Originally a satire of the post-World War II world, it’s now a scary foresight into the 2010’s world.
Every human should read this cautionary tale.
The dark future. Which leaves you looking around and seeing it’s shadow in the present.
After reading today’s news, it is highly instructive to see how prescient George Orwell was. It is almost 70 years later and so many, many things he described have come to pass, mostly in the political realm where attempts are made to revise and re-package the truth everyday.
Timely
Very insightful
Makes one worry about the future of humanity.
A dystopian classic. and a must-read.
I read this book over 40 years ago. It was a great read.
Frighteningly pertinent today.
What a book! I first read it in high school and I couldn’t put it down. Haunting, frightening and very thought provoking! If you’ve read out, read it again! If you haven’t, read it today!
Wonderful book but hasn’t everyone able to read in the world already read it?
I have read this book over 30 times over the years. So much of it has come to pass.
Very interesting reading about the changing of history to be something which fitss the pressent day notions.
Initially read many years before 1984, and glad that decades later it still isn’t reality, it is a little bone chilling that our PC obsessed world doesn’t see how close we are being pushed to correct-speak, and correct-think. The book is still relevant, 30+ years after 1984.
Since I read it in the 50s it had much more impact, however I think then someone reading it today but it still an important book, and absolute impact on Social and political ideas.
It was a book that you read once and not ever again it is almost as haunting as Brave New World.
I read this book many years ago. I think I need to read it again. I remember it well.
This book has haunted e since my first reading of it. More people need to read it.
And again, and, again, and…
Very scary and more relevant today than when I read it almost 50 years ago.