George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair. He was a novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic. His memoir Homage to Catalonia recounts his participation in the forces of the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) during th Spanish Civil War and his consequent disillusionment with Marxist politics. In 1945, Orwell wrote Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, which was a fable about a farm in which the animals rose up against their masters, only to find themselves under the thrall of new masters. He wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1948. The novel is presumably set in the year 1984, but nobody in the novel is sure of the true date, since the people have lost their respect for truth and facts, under pressure from the ruling Party. Note that 1984 represents the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Fabian Society. Thus, Orwell’s critique is as much about the dark tendencies he saw in English politics as it is a critique of the politics of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Toward the end of his life, Orwell made it clear that he was against totalitarianism in any form and for democratic socialism, as he understood it.
Here’s the audiobook:
It has been made into a movie several times: Adaptations of Nineteen Eighty-Four – Wikipedia