Details

ISBN-10: 0143136291
ISBN-13: 9780143136293
Publisher: Penguin Group
Publish Date: 12/14/2021
Dimensions: 8.30" L, 5.60" W, 0.80" H

We

Translator: Clarence Brown
Introduction by: Clarence Brown
Notes by: Clarence Brown
Foreword by: Masha Gessen

Hardcover

Price: $27.00

Overview

A collectible hardcover centennial edition of the exhilarating Russian dystopian novel of totalitarian mass surveillance that inspired George Orwell’s 1984, featuring a foreword by the National Book Award-winning New Yorker journalist Masha Gessen

A Penguin Vitae Edition

In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful “Benefactor,” the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity–until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: He has an individual soul. Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We is the archetype of the modern dystopia and the forerunner of works such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Suppressed for many years in Russia, it details the fate that might befall us all if we surrender to some collective dream of technology, and remains a resounding cry for individual freedom. Clarence Brown’s brilliant translation is based on the corrected text of the novel, first published in Russia in 1988 after more than sixty years’ suppression.

Penguin Vitae–loosely translated as “Penguin of one’s life”–is a deluxe hardcover series from Penguin Classics celebrating a dynamic and diverse landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction from seventy-five years of classics publishing. Penguin Vitae provides readers with beautifully designed classics that have shaped the course of their lives, and welcomes new readers to discover these literary gifts of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.

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Reviews
"Zamyatin . . . did more than predict some of the specific characteristics of totalitarianism―he predicted its defining condition: the destruction of the individual. . . . [He] found the word for it: We." ―Masha Gessen, from the Foreword

"The best single work of science fiction yet written." –Ursula K. Le Guin

"[Zamyatin's] intuitive grasp of the irrational side of totalitarianism–human sacrifice, cruelty as an end in itself–makes [We] superior to Huxley's [Brave New World]." –George Orwell

"At this dystopian moment in world politics, everyone's talking about 1984, but take a look at the novel that inspired it (or, at least, which George Orwell reviewed soon before he wrote 1984)–Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. . . . The dystopia Zamyatin painted has, alas, many echoes with today's surveillance society–just think of China's budding 'social credit' program, which monitors citizens' movements. Big Brother was a piker, compared to Xi Jinping. Zamyatin saw it coming." –Lit Hub

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Details

ISBN-10: 0143136291
ISBN-13: 9780143136293
Publisher: Penguin Group
Publish Date: 12/14/2021
Dimensions: 8.30" L, 5.60" W, 0.80" H
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