We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

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 were 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 WorldAnthem1984 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.

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937) was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. The son of a Russian Orthodox priest and a musician, Zamyatin studied engineering in Saint Petersburg from 1902 until 1908 in order to serve in the Russian Imperial Navy. During this time, however, he became disillusioned with Tsarist policy and Christianity, turning to Atheism and Bolshevism instead. He was arrested in 1905 during a meeting at a local revolutionary headquarters and was released after a year of torture and solitary confinement. Unable to bear life as an internal exile, Zamyatin fled to Finland before returning to St. Petersburg under an alias, at which time he began writing works of fiction. Arrested once more in 1911, Zamyatin was released and pardoned in 1913, publishing his satire of small-town Russia, A Provincial Tale, to resounding acclaim. Completing his engineering studies, he was sent by the Imperial Russian Navy to England to oversee the development of icebreakers in shipyards along the coast of the North Sea. There, he gathered source material for The Islanders (1918) a satire of English life, before returning to St. Petersburg in 1917 to embark on his literary career in earnest. As the Russian Civil War plunged the country into chaos, Zamyatin became increasingly critical of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, leading to his eventual exile. Between 1920 and 1921, he wrote We (1924), a dystopian novel set in a futuristic totalitarian state. Thought to be influential for the works of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, We is a groundbreaking work of science fiction that earned Zamyatin a reputation as a leading political dissident of his time. With the help of Maxim Gorky, Zamyatin obtained a passport and was permitted to leave the Soviet Union in 1931. Settling in Paris, he spent the rest of his life in exile and deep poverty.