George Orwell is a pen name of English author Eric Arthur Blair; he is most known for his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and the concepts like “thought police” and “doublethink” derived from it. In 2005 the book was listed among the hundred best English-language novels published since 1923. Now this novel as well as some other works by George Orwell are available in Kindle edition.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949) is a classic dystopia showing a repressed society with a totalitarian regime where the rights of an individual are totally sacrificed for national politics. To keep control over population, the government develops a complex invasive system of surveillance (“Big Brother is Watching You“), propaganda and “Newspeak” (a language based on English but with a much smaller vocabulary and grammar simplified to make it impossible to commit “thoughtcrime”, any alternative thinking). The book was written in 1948; some scholars believe that the title was derived from this year as Orwell reversed the numbers on purpose to show that the events taking place in the novel were not so distant, rather they might be contemporary. “The story of one man’s nightmare odyssey as he pursues a forbidden love affair through a world ruled by warring states and a power structure that controls not only information but also individual thought and memory, 1984 is a prophetic, haunting tale.”
Animal Farm (published in 1945) is another dystopian masterpiece by George Orwell. In 1996, it won a Retrospective Hugo Award; Modern Library ranks it 31 among Best 20th-Century Novels. At first, the author had great difficulty getting it accepted; one of four publishers finally agreed but later refused to publish the manuscript, having consulted with the Ministry of Information. At last, the first edition was published by Secker and Warburg in 1945. In a satirical allegory, Orwell severely criticizes Stalinism and outcomes of Bolshevik Revolution; though allegedly stating that all are equal, they created “more equal species” corrupted by power and greed. “Fueled by Orwell’s intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works.”
