Nineteen Eighty-four (Study Texts S.)

Nineteen Eighty-Four, sometimes published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by George Orwell. The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation dictated by a political system in the government's invented language, Newspeak, called Ingsoc under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as "thoughtcrimes." The tyranny is epitomized by Big Brother, the quasi-divine Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who may not even exist. Nineteen Eighty-Four popularized the adjective Orwellian, which describes official deception, secret surveillance, and manipulation of the past by a totalitarian or authoritarian state.

"My favourite book is 1984 . . . More relevant to today than almost any other book that you can think of" (Jo Brand)

"His final masterpiece . . . enthralling and indispensable for understanding modern history" (New York Review of Books)

"The book of the twentieth century . . . haunts us with an ever-darker relevance" (Independent)

"Orwell remains the most indispensable English writer of his period" (Observer)

"One of the most influential English writers of the twentieth century" (Robert McCrum Observer)

"Many writers and journalists have tried to imitate his particular kind of clarity without possessing anything like his moral authority" (Peter Ackroyd The Times)

"Matchlessly sharp and fresh . . . The clearest and most compelling English prose style this century" (John Carey Sunday Times)

"Orwell's innocent eye was often devastatingly perceptive . . . a man who looked at his world with wonder and wrote down exactly what he saw, in admirable prose" (Evening Standard)

"The great moral force of his age . . . It is impossible not to be elated by his literary and political writing . . . the most lovable of writers, someone whose books can make the reader long for his company" (Spectator)