1984

George OrwellLiaoning People's Publishing House · ChinaMay 2017

Rating 4.4
Word count
123K words
Chapters
31
ISBN
9787205076900

Tags

Foreign Literature Political AllegoryTotalitarian SocietySurveillance SocietyLanguage and PowerIndividual ResistanceThought ControlPower OppressionFree WillProphetic NovelDystopia

Summary

"

This is the masterpiece of the English novelist George Orwell. As early as the 1940s, the author predicted the future direction of the world: two great blocs would confront each other. Many terms from this novel later came into frequent use and became part of everyday language. In 2005, Time magazine named it one of the "100 best novels since 1923," ranking 13th in the editors' choice and 6th in the readers' choice. The BBC included it in its "Big Read" list, where it ranked 8th.

This edition is the most popular version in the West."

Editor's review

Published in 1949, 1984 is a dystopian political allegory by George Orwell and one of the most influential literary works of the twentieth century. Set in Oceania, a fictional world under totalitarian control, it explores enduring themes of power, freedom, truth, and individual consciousness. The protagonist, Winston Smith, tries to hold on to independent thought and to seek genuine feeling and memory under ubiquitous surveillance ("Big Brother is watching you") and thought control; his struggle and final fate are profoundly striking. Orwell's prose is cold and precise, and the concepts he created—"doublethink," "Newspeak," the "Thought Police"—have long outgrown literature to become classic terms for examining real politics and society. Reading this book is not only an encounter with a fictional history but also a profound reflection on the nature of power, the manipulation of information, and the resilience and fragility of human nature under extreme conditions. In an age of information overload and noisy public opinion, rereading 1984 is especially urgent: it warns us against any monopoly on truth and any erosion of freedom.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. While reading, pay attention to Orwell's construction of language ("Newspeak") and consider how language shapes and limits thought
  2. Compare the surveillance, historical revision, and propaganda depicted in the book with information dissemination in contemporary society
  3. After reading, consider extending to Orwell's Animal Farm and Huxley's Brave New World to compare different dystopian perspectives

About the publisher

Liaoning People's Publishing House China · Founded in 1951

Liaoning People's Publishing House is a local publisher focusing on works in the social sciences. Its publishing areas cover philosophy, politics, economics, history and law, and also include dictionaries and reference books. It currently has 332 titles in the database. Its publishing profile is best reflected in translations of foreign literature and Western philosophy, with common categories including foreign literature, Western philosophy and Eastern philosophy. Representative books include English-language editions or translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Cervantes's Don Quixote, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and The Idiot, Hugo's Les Misérables, Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature and Eliot's Middlemarch. Its author resources involve Homer, Cervantes, Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, David Hume, George Eliot and Alexis de Tocqueville. As public information is limited, its specific publishing features require further confirmation through more bibliographic data.

Contents

  1. 版权信息
  2. Is this book for you? 人类的囚笼与自由的光辉
  3. George Orwell
  4. General Preface
  5. 总序
  6. Part One
  7. Chapter 1
  8. Chapter 2
  9. Chapter 3
  10. Chapter 4
  11. Chapter 5
  12. Chapter 6
  13. Chapter 7
  14. Chapter 8
  15. Part Two
  16. Chapter 1
  17. Chapter 2
  18. Chapter 3
  19. Chapter 4
  20. Chapter 5
  21. Chapter 6
  22. Chapter 7
  23. Chapter 8
  24. Chapter 9
  25. Part Three
  26. Chapter 1
  27. Chapter 2
  28. Chapter 3
  29. Chapter 4
  30. Chapter 5
  31. Chapter 6

FAQ

Is the story of 1984 set in the actual year 1984? No. The book was written in 1949, and the title "1984" is the author's imagined setting for the future (relative to the time of writing)—a fictional totalitarian future world, not a historical record.
What exactly do concepts such as "Big Brother" and "doublethink" mean in the book? "Big Brother" is the supreme, ubiquitous symbol of the leader in Oceania, representing the surveillance and control of totalitarian rule. "Doublethink" is the mental ability to hold two contradictory beliefs at once, a mode of thinking the ruling class requires of the people in order to maintain control over truth.
Why does 1984 still attract so much attention today? Because its revelations about the manipulation of information, history, and language by power, the alienation and resistance of the individual under systemic oppression, and the dialectic of freedom and slavery are universal and transcend their time. In an era of increasingly complex digital surveillance, information filtering, and opinion guidance, the book's warnings seem especially profound and relevant.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

George Orwell Author · British · 1903–1950

George Orwell was a British novelist, essayist and critic, born Eric Arthur Blair in British India in 1903; he died in 1950. He served as a police officer in Burma and later took part in the Spanish Civil War, experiences that kept him alert to the workings of power and social injustice. His best-known works, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, use allegory and dystopian narrative to criticise totalitarianism; his prose is cool and clear, and his influence has been far-reaching. The collection holds 79 of his works, including several editions of Nineteen Eighty-Four, bilingual and illustrated versions, and Animal Farm; they are commonly classified under social culture, foreign literature and world classics.