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Dec 13, 2011

Bird Brian rated it:

Author Yevgeny Zamyatin took part in two Russian Revolutions, hoping to overthrow the abusive and excessive Czarist system. He had joined the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), and believed Lenin's promises of a more equitable society, where labor controlled the means of production. By 1920, he tried to remain hopeful, but it was becoming apparent that the country was going in the wrong direction. Three long years since the Revolution had not moved anyone closer to a "workers' para More...

10 comments like (45 people liked it)

Nov 29, 2011

Simon rated it:

One can see echoes of this story in other greats of dystopian SF such as Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 and, of course, the great 1984. Written in the early 1920's it hadn't taken Zamyatin long to realise the logical consequences of the ideological reasoning behind his country's recent revolution. And this is precisely what is explored here, several hundred years in the future after the successful elimination of all opposition.

What would a society be like that had eliminated all notio More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Dec 20, 2011

Meaghan rated it:

This is a superb work of science fiction, and I'm sorry it's not as well known as its dystopian counterparts 1984 and Brave New World. What the One State reminded me of, though, was not either of those books but rather the planet Camozotz in Madeleine L'Engle's book A Wrinkle In Time.

Besides the splendid, suspenseful plotting, the protagonist had one of the most distinctive literary voices I have ever seen. I had no idea one could do mathematics so poetically, and come up with such b More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Jan 04, 2010

Shannon rated it:

A thousand years in our future, D-503 is just one number among many in the One State. The One State is a city, a society, that revolves not around the individual but around the collective we, like a hive, with the Benefactor in God-like status at the centre. D-503 works as a constructor on the Integral, the ship that will take their ideology and philosophy of life to other planets, to civilise and free other species. When an article in the State Gazette calls for poems, manifestos etc. to go in More...

0 comments like (12 people liked it)

Apr 11, 2011

Hans rated it:

200 pages of an interminable balancing act between decision and indecision. A severely fractured protagonist suffering through the weight of unwanted responsibility. Hopelessly clawing at two realities with a narrow distinction between both and with the threats of his actions mercilessly ratcheting up the pressure.

The fragmented society in which he lives mirroring his own life; held together only by extinguishing and suppressing half of its humanity.

This book reminds me o More...

2 comments like (8 people liked it)

Oct 30, 2011

Shawn rated it:

So, I was reading through my list of Zamyatin stories and thought, "well, here's a chance to get the one novel out of the way".

Famous for being the first "dystopian" novel, mentally this brings to mind images of Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS (*although I especially appreciated the Bruce Sterling's introduction suggestion to envision the characters in Soviet Constructivist Art-era costumes* - worked a treat!). The idea is pretty easy to grasp - a "projecto ad absurd More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 08, 2010

Afoue rated it:

Absolutely brilliant.

We is the story of a future in which the citizens of a society, known as "digits", all maintain the same mindset: allegiance to the Do-Gooder. In this world, everyone stays inside the Green Wall, everyone wears a uniform, and everyone wakes and sleeps at the same time. Everything is mathematical; the "chaos" of past music has been refined to something more precise.

The digits have no problem with this way of living, including digit More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Aug 20, 2007

Jeff rated it:

This was a very challenging read; in many ways I feel a second read will be necessary to better comprehend this book.

Zamyatin's protagonist, D-503, is a mathematician as well, and as such, he consciously eschews flowery language. Natasha Randall's translation is excellent, and she keeps Zamyatin's sentence fragments and sudden exclamations intact. Nestled among these, however, are descriptions of startling imagery ("Only a gaunt gray shadow is slowly crawling up the bluish star More...

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

Oct 07, 2010

Amy added it

This is the "granddaddy" of the modern dystopian novel, the book that influenced Huxley's Brave New World, Rand's Anthem, and Orwell's 1984: Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (1924). I've read it repeatedly and taught it, as well, and I always discover something new in the novel each time I turn to it. It's a brilliantly chilling depiction of a futuristic totalitarian regime that organizes its people's lives with almost scientific precision, as seen through the troubled eyes of one of its leading More...

6 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jul 01, 2011

Nate rated it:

1984 was published in 1949. Brave New World in 1931. Of course, long before either of these Brits could get spooked by machine-like totalitarian communism, Russians were already getting spooked by their own country. In the 20s, Mikhail Bulgakov and Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, to name a couple whose objections and subversiveness guaranteed that their finest works went unpublished in their lifetimes. And even earlier, only just after the revolution in 1920, Yevgeny Zamyatin anticipated much of that More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 30, 2008

Joshua rated it:

Completed in 1921 and banned in it's native Russia for over 50 years, Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is generally considered the grandfather of dystopian literature. Before Orwell had his Big Brother, and before Huxley had his Brave New World , Yevgeny had We and the all-powerful Benefactor. Hugely inspirational to Orwell and Huxley, Yevgeny created a world that in my humble opinion, was better than the ones that followed.
The novel revolves around a man named "D-503" who lives in a t More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2011

Deana rated it:

The particular translation I read of this book was by Mirra Ginsburg, and is a somewhat older translation.

I really enjoyed this book. But then, I've often enjoyed books about utopian societies. This one was apparently one of the first, if not THE first to theorize about a supposedly utopian/dystopian society, with 1984 and A Brave New World following in its footsteps.

The book was originally written in Russian, and there were times when I could tell that certain aspects of the More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 01, 2008

Ben rated it:

It is said there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years. Why should there not be some that bloom once in a thousand, in ten thousand years? Perhaps we never knew about them simply because this "once in a thousand years" has come only today?

Blissfully, drunkenly, I walked down the stairs to the number on duty, and all around me, wherever my eyes fell, thousand-year-old buds were bursting into bloom. Everything bloomed-- armchairs, shoes, golden badges, electric More...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Yulia rated it:

I'm still trying to decide which I preferred, this or 1984. Both had flawed writing, but does this get points for having been written first (1924 vs. 1949)? I believe so. Some mistake his having translated Orwell into Russian for his having been inspired by Orwell and not the reverse. It's unbelievable.

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Tzeck rated it:

Антиутопията на антиутопиите! Пред която се кланят и Оруел и Хъксли. "Ние" на Евгений Замятин. Книга-постулат е това. Чете се на един дъх, но този дъх е вледеняващ. Няма по-съвършено описана и представена антиутопия от това. Няма! Не е възможно да има по-смразаващ и ужасяващ всеки свободомислещ човек свят от този - светът на Световната държава! Свят, протичащ в непроменящ се ритъм. Свят без чувства, без личности, без имена. Светът на огромната всеобща човешка машина, в която индивидът More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 16, 2011

Zzoeeeee rated it:

A very good representation of what it would be like to be the first person to dream in a world without dreams. His imagination seems to permeate into his everyday life to the point of insanity and the reader begins to question whether this is worse than living with an entirely logical mind. The dichotomy D-503 faces between his vague urge for freedom and the security of being under OneState rule is possibly more interesting than the simple fear of discovery faced by Winston in 1984.

Plus I fell a More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 23, 2011

Denae rated it:

Yevgeny Zamyatin described We as "my most jesting and most serious work." Having read nothing else by the author I cannot completely concur with the statement, but serious and jesting it certainly is. We describes a supposedly utopian society based on mathematics and a petroleum based food substance. (If the latter seems an odd choice, keep in mind that the book was written in 1920.) This society is the result of a two hundred year war in which all but 0.2% of humanity is wiped out and More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 24, 2011

Brendan rated it:

“They say there are flowers that bloom only once every hundred years. Why shouldn’t there be others, that bloom once every thousand—ten thousand—years. Maybe we never knew about them only because that once-every-thousand-years is today.”—We, Yevgheniy Zamyatin

Published 27 years before George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Yevgheniy Zamyatin’s We could easily be mistaken as just a precursor of Orwell’s dystopian thriller. But Zamyatin is much more than a Russian Orwell—he introspective More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 19, 2011

William rated it:

We (written 1920-21; suppressed in USSR until 1988) fits under the heading of retro-dystopias. Zamyatin's real interest here is the impossibility of being fully human in a totalitarian society. His future is not technologically superior. There's very little that might be called high-tech. In the way it is both forward-looking and dated, the mood it inspires it is rather like that of watching Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I liked that. It was like finding this artefact of world lit. A piece of the his More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 16, 2008

John rated it:

The two stars is not meant to suggest that I don't appreciate the historical importance of this book. As is often noted, it is one of the earliest novels to depict a dystopian totalitarian future, written in 1924 -- before "1984" and "Brave New World." So while two stars may strike some as churlish, I admit that I found Zamyatin's narrative poorly executed and the portrayal of the totalitarian state one-dimensional and unbelievable.

This is also a problem that I More...

3 comments like (6 people liked it)

May 04, 2008

Chris rated it:

When the creators of badass shit like ‘Logan’s Run’ and “1984” are eager to cite your output as significant and influential, you’ve got the goods. With “We”, Zamyatin earns those lofty credentials, and also wins the endearing faith from its readers.

With the 200-Years War in the remote past, a post-apocalyptic society known as OneState rises amidst the aftermath by embracing the tenets of efficiency expert Frederick Taylor and crafts a futuristic paradise, a new world built around More...

0 comments like (11 people liked it)

Feb 13, 2008

Isaac rated it:

There is something charming about this book, the familiarity of the ideas and the way you can see its influence twining through 20th century literature, but like a lot of pioneering works it's more interesting for what it says than what it is, I think. This could be the fault of a rather dreary translation which does not think of comprehensibility as one of its goals, or possibly just the fact that everything the book espouses has been gnashed over so much in our culture in the 80 year More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 03, 2008

Seabury rated it:

This book is the prototype for many of the books that are well known. It predates the Adolexus Huxley's Brave New World by several years. It is George Orwell's inspiration for 1984, and was thought to be the main inspiration for Brave New World, until Adolexus Huxley claimed that he wrote Brave New World before hearing of this. Well, reading this book almost makes me doubt Huxley, such are the parallels between the novels. We describes a completly industrialised society. This society is based More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Apr 23, 2011

Tracey rated it:

I picked up We a few months ago after seeing it in several different Best Science Fiction-type lists.

The book is written in the form of a journal, recording the thoughts and actions of D-503, the Builder of the Integral. He hopes to include this journal when the spaceship is launched, in order to bring the beliefs of the One State to any possible extra-terrestrials. The One State provides happiness through reason and logic; strictly controlling all aspects of daily life. Those who tra More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 09, 2009

Micha rated it:

"What have you learned while reading this novel?"
I learned that Ayn Rand is a plagiarist and George Orwell had a crackerjack publisher.

For me, what really stood out in this novel, and perhaps in many of the really GREAT ones, were not the main characters of D & I (beginning of alphabet..) but it's "side" characters. Those who were overlooked. We never really see this future from their perspective, yet we do get a glimpse of it and one can sense that they More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Feb 08, 2009

веселин власакиев rated it:

тая книжка също си я закупих на шести. влиза в to-read, щото много станаха в currently-reading, пък и не я. разбрах че алекс (жена) не е стигнала до руските утописти, но ето на сега я провокирам да си закупи копие. осем кинта от всяка книжарница (предполагам).

сега и ако фама ми пуснат някой лев ...

това място колкото и да е досадно, скучно и тъпо и не в България и на български може да се използва за книголог (хо-хо-хо). така или иначе хората се кефят на социалния тип мрежи More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 19, 2009

Aimee rated it:

I read this book in my college literature class. It's written in the same tone and subject as Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World. Written in the form of a diary, it takes place in an urban setting, the entire population (nation) being separated from nature by the "Green Wall" and all buildings being made almost entirely of glass. No one has a name, only an assigned number, pink coupon books are issued and used for the times they have sex with their selected/assigned partner. More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 12, 2009

Mary added it

I first read this eerie novel in 2006 -- a library copy, and unfortunately didn't write down the name of the translator. Now I've reread my own copy -- every page marked & cross-referenced -- in the most recent translation by Natasha Randall. Also X-ref it with the excerpts in THE UTOPIA READER and translated by Gregory Zilboorg. Of the thousand images/metaphors Zamyatin employs, my favorite is glass -- the people live in a walled city made entirely of transparent glass.

"... a s More...

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Feb 04, 2012

Tony rated it:

WE. (1924). Eugene Zamiatin. ****.
Zamiatin was a Russian writer whose works were banned in Russia. In order to pursue his dreams of writing but considering his situation under the then current regime in regard to his writings, he wrote a letter to Stalin requesting a visa to visit Europe, where he could continue his writing. Surprisingly, the visa was granted, and Zamiatin left Russia for Europe. He ultimately ended up in France. This work, although written in Russian, was never pu More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2011

Gina rated it:

-The number next to me glanced to the left, at me, and snorted. Somehow, a vivid memory remains: a tiny bubble of saliva blew out on his lips and burst. The bubble sobered me. I was myself again.
-Today, poetry is no longer the idle, impudent whistling of a nightingale; poetry is civic service, poetry is useful.
-Through the glass the blunt snout of some beast stared dully, mistily at me; yellow eyes, persistently repeating a single, incomprehensible thought. For a long time we stare More...

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