This is a description of George Orwell's Nineteen
Eighty-Four, which was first published 60 years
ago on Monday. But it is also the plot of Yevgeny
Zamyatin's We, a Russian novel originally published in English in 1924.
Orwell's novel is consistently acclaimed as one
of the finest of the last 100 years two years
ago Guardian readers voted it thhe 20th century's
"definitive" book and it remains a consistent
beestseller. Should it alter our respect for it
that Orwell borrowed much of his plot, the
outlines of three of his central figures, and the
progress of the book's dramatic arc from an earlier work?
Orwell reviewed We for Tribune in 1946, three
years before he published Nineteen Eighty-Four.
In his review, he called Zamyatin's book an
influence on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World,
though Huxley always denied anything of the sort.
"It is in effect a study of the Machine," Orwell
wrote of We, "the genie that man has
thoughtlessly let out of its bottle and cannot
put back again. This is a book to look out for
when an English version appears." He seems to have taken his own advice.
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/jun/08/george-orwell-1984-zamyatin-we>Link
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<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2009/06/1984-thoughtcrime-does-it-matter-that.htm>monochrom
at 6/09/2009 04:39:00 PM
