Publisher Description
We is an earth shattering dystopian novel that ruffled the feathers of the ruling elite of Russia when it was smuggled out of the country and published in English in 1924. It would not see publication in Russia until 1988. As a result of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s treatment over the novel he left Russia. We is set in the twenty six century where a totalitarian government rules the world. Every citizen has all of their needs completely taken care of. But the price is a life without passion, creativity, or adventure. Cities are made of glass to aid the government’s surveillance of its people. Citizens are given numbers rather than names to discourage individuality. But resentment and anger seethe just beneath the surface of the citizenry’s polite veneer. It is time for someone to strike a blow for individuality and freedom. A fast paced adventure novel with a message that reverberated down through history. Brave New World, Anthem, 1984, and Player Piano all owe an enduring debt to We. Of writing Player Piano Kurt Vonnegut said “I cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We.”
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)
