'If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.'
Although I have a beautiful, Penguin clothbound copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four, I chose to listen to it, and I'm so glad I did! As soon as the narrator spoke the first words, I knew that I knew him, and it took me all of five minutes to realise that it was Adam from the Archers. He was phenomenal, and made Winston come to life!
I read this book many, many years ago, and I couldn't remember a thing about it. I found it terrifying that the authoritarian state in which he's living, could be said to resemble what's happening in certain parts of the world right now. Let's rewrite history, and make it the way we want it!😲
I enjoyed the beginning and the end, but now and then, Orwell goes off on a tangent and I became bored quite quickly.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is definitely worth a read, just because it's a classic. Oh, and I love that he lived about thirty minutes from me, in a town on the east coast of England called Southwold. There is a huge mural of him on the pier there.
Thank you to #classiclitbookclub for choosing this one for August's read.
About the Book
Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.
As both pioneering political journalist and sage-like novelist George Orwell shaped how many of us interpreted the 20th century. His pre-war reportage highlighted inequality and poverty in Britain’s provinces, as well as bearing witness to pivotal political developments in Civil War Spain. His earlier fiction drew on his own experiences in imperial India and the English suburbs but broadened out to envision dystopian worlds rich in political allegory. His masterwork, Nineteen Eighty-Four, is one of the most significant novels of the 20th century.
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