George Orwell novel 1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the Orwell novel. For other uses, see 1984 (disambiguation). Nineteen Eighty-Four British first edition cover Author George Orwell Cover artist Michael Kennard Country United Kingdom Language English Genre Dystopian, political fiction, social science fiction Published 8 June 1949 (Secker and Warburg, London) OCLC 52187275 Dewey Decimal 823/.912 22 LC Class PR6029.R8 N647 2003 Nineteen Eighty-Four, sometimes published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by George Orwell published in 1949.[1][2] 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 euphemistically named English Socialism (or Ingsoc in the governments invented language, Newspeak) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as thoughtcrimes.[3] 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. Big Brother and the Party justify their oppressive rule in the name of a supposed greater good.[1] The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party who works for the Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to rewrite past newspaper articles so that the historical record always supports the current party line.[4] Smith is a diligent and skillful worker, but he secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother. As literary political fiction and dystopian science-fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel in content, plot, and style. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, Telescreen, 2 + 2 = 5, and memory hole, have entered everyday use since its publication in 1949. Moreover, Nineteen Eighty-Four popularised the adjective Orwellian, which describes official deception, secret surveillance, and manipulation of the past by a totalitarian or authoritarian state.In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.It was awarded a place on both lists of Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 13 on the editors list, and 6 on the readers list.[6] In 2003, the novel was listed at number 8 on the BBCs survey The Big Read.
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