We
With the Introductory Chapter, The Revolution and Famine in Russia By H. G. Wells
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
D-503 is a mathematician and citizen of One State, a totalitarian society whose inhabitants live passionless lives under the all-powerful 'Benefactor'. However, when D-503 discovers that he has an individual soul, everything changes. Set in the twenty-sixth century, “We” is the dystopian science fiction novel that inspired George Orwell's famous “1984” and was the first work to be banned by the Soviet censorship board. A frightfully thought-provoking dystopian novel not to be missed by fans of speculative fiction. Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin (1884–1937) was a Russian author who wrote science fiction and political satire. Other notable works by this author include: “Robert Maier” (1922), “Gerbert Uells” (1922), and “On Literature, Revolution, and Entropy” (1924). Read & Co. is republishing this classic science fiction novel in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with an Introductory Chapter from H. G. Wells' “The Revolution And Famine In Russia”.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First published in the Soviet 1920s, Zamyatin's dystopic novel left an indelible watermark on 20th-century culture, from Orwell's 1984 to Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil. Randall's exciting new translation strips away the Cold War connotations and makes us conscious of Zamyatin's other influences, from Dostoyevski to German expressionism. D-503 is a loyal "cipher" of the totalitarian One State, literally walled in by glass; he is a mathematician happily building the world's first rocket, but his life is changed by meeting I-330, a woman with "sharp teeth" who keeps emerging out of a sudden vampirish dusk to smile wickedly on the poor narrator and drive him wild with desire. (When she first forces him to drink alcohol, the mind leaps to Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel.) In becoming a slave to love, D-503 becomes, briefly, a free man. In Randall's hands, Zamyatin's modernist idiom crackles ("I only remember his fingers: they flew out of his sleeve, like bundles of beams"), though the novel sometimes seems prophetic of the onset of Stalinism, particularly in the bleak ending. Modern Library's reintroduction of Zamyatin's novel is a literary event sure to bring this neglected classic to the attention of a new readership. (On sale July 11)
