1984 Print Book

Plot Summary

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. These are the watchwords for The Party, which governs Oceania with absolute authority. In Airstrip One (formerly known as England), the omnipresent viewscreens, which the people watch and by which in turn are watched, remind everyone that “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.” Winston Smith, member of the Outer Party and diligent worker in the Ministry of Truth, where he rewrites history, is dead. He already knows it, for he has committed thoughtcrime. “Thoughtcrime doesn’t entail death,” he notes in his forbidden journal, “thoughtcrime IS death.” As he starts his journey as a thought criminal seeking actual truth, he encounters Julia, beautiful and tempting; O’Brien, member of the Inner Party and potential ally against tyranny; and the truth about a party seeking power for power’s sake. And this truth, it will not set him free. 1984: New Classic Edition, written in 1948, is a cautionary tale. Orwell saw, in the burgeoning Cold War, a terrible future, and detailed it in this lasting novel which has been translated into 65 different languages; the dystopic future of 1984 remains as poignant and timely in any year and in any era. George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair, an English novelist who used his works to comment on the perils of social injustice and totalitarianism. A journalist by trade, he was best known during his life for his essays and columns in newspapers and magazines, famously describing the effects of poverty in Paris and northern England as well as covering the Spanish Civil War. He wrote most of 1984 while ill, being diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1947. Still, he persisted, writing one of the most important works in the English language, responsible for such neologisms as “doublethink,” “Big Brother” and “memory hole” and immortalized in the term “Orwellian.” He died at the age of 46 on January 21, 1950.

Publisher Summary

Blackstone Audio presents a new recording of this immensely popular book. George Orwell depicts a gray, totalitarian world dominated by Big Brother and its vast network of agents, including the Thought Police, a world in which news is manufactured according to the authorities will and people live tepid lives by rote. Winston Smith, the hero with no heroic qualities, longs only for truth and decency. But living in a social system in which privacy does not exist and where those with unorthodox ideas are brainwashed or put to death, he knows there is no hope for him. He knows even as he continues to pursue his forbidden love affair that eventually he will come to destruction. The year 1984 has come and gone, yet George Orwells nightmare vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is still the great modern classic of negative Utopia. It is a prophetic and haunting tale that exposes the worst crimes imaginable: the destruction of freedom and truth. Download and start listening now!

Quotes

Before one has finished reading the nearly bemused first page, it is evident that this is fiction of another order, and presently one makes the distinctly unpleasant discovery that it is not to be satire at all. – New York Times Book Review A profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating bookOrwells theory of power is developed brilliantly. – New Yorker Orwells 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 1984 is a remarkable book; as a virtuoso literary performance it has a sustained brilliance that has rarely been matched in other works of its genreIt is as timely as the label on a poison bottle. – New York Herald Tribune Among the seminal texts of the twentieth century, 1984 is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more realThe brilliance of the novel is Orwells prescience of modern lifethe ubiquity of television, the distortion of the languageand his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written. – Amazon.com, editorial review Orwells lean prose, finely honed political discourse, and penetrating images seem as fresh, as menacing, and as disturbingly prophetic as ever. With British equanimity, Simon Prebble accentuates every shade of gray in post-Blitzed-LondonPrebble is especially effective at subtly changing pace and giving weight to each characters most telling moments1984 remains one of the most powerful and influential masterworks of twentieth-century literature. – AudioFile