NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR

The principal characters who lead us through that world are ordinary human beings like ourselves: Winston Smith and Julia, whose falling in love is also an act of rebellion against the Party. Opposing them are the massed powers of the state, which watches its citizens on all sides through technology now only too familiar to us. No-one is free from surveillance; the past is constantly altered, so that there is no truth except the most recent version; and Big Brother, both loved and feared, controls all. Even the simple act of keeping a diary - as Winston does - is punishable by death. In Winston's battle to keep his freedom of thought, he has a powerful adversary in O'Brien, who uses fear and pain to enter his very thought processes. Does 2+2 = 4? Or is it 5? We find out in Room 101.

edition also includes the following selection of Orwell's essays, column extracts and broadcasts: A Hanging; Spilling the Spanish Beans; Reviews of Jack London, The Iron Heel; H. G. Wells, When the Sleeper Awakes; Aldous Huxley, Brave New World; Ernest Bramah, The Secret of the League ; England Your England; Looking Back on the Spanish War; Arthur Koestler; The Prevention of Literature; Politics and the English Language; Why I Write; Politics Vs Literature; Sir Walter Raleigh; The Three Super-States of the Future; Persecution of Writers in USSR; Literature and Totalitarianism; Imaginary Interview: George Orwell and Jonathan Swift