We in Never too Late to Read Classics

Jan 23, 2011 Yair Ben-Zvi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

This could be my favorite book. Let me explain, I read George Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World (loved the former, enjoyed the latter) and when a friend let me know about this book, Zamyatin's We, a book that apparently served as the source for both of those texts, I was excited and even a bit worried. I mean, writers/artists/people rip each other off (or pay homage, or just cheat, however you want to define it) all the time and I was wondering how a 'tribute' in this dystopian science This could be my favorite book. Let me explain, I read George Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World (loved the former, enjoyed the latter) and when a friend let me know about this book, Zamyatin's We, a book that apparently served as the source for both of those texts, I was excited and even a bit worried. I mean, writers/artists/people rip each other off (or pay homage, or just cheat, however you want to define it) all the time and I was wondering how a 'tribute' in this dystopian science fiction vein would play out.

In the end, it played out incredibly. On the back cover of the novel Orwell is quoted as saying We is superior to Brave New World, I am inclined to agree. The descriptive power in Natasha Randall's translation makes this novel a trip akin to a paranoid schizophrenic's descent into madness and back again whereas Huxley's work was good if a little too plain and obvious in what it was trying to say.

D-503, the mathematician protagonist of We, is an interesting character, they all are (if you've read dystopian fiction you'll definitely recognize the tropes and archetypes) as they are all painted (as they are all seen through his eyes) as blindly controlled yet still, even if only subconsciously, rebelling against the machinations of the One State. Amongst all this, the story is actually funny too, dark humor to be sure, but it fits with the style of the novel so well it never feels tacked on or out of place.

Though the ending of the story is bleak (no spoilers, but come on, how happy did you think it could turn out?) it's still cherry compared to 1984. But here I think I can make a distinction. Where Orwell left us with nothing but the eternal cyclicality of totalitarian rule, the boot constantly crushing the head of the man, Zamyatin leaves us with some hope, even if it's only of the most darkly cynical, bordering on the gallows humor.

So, in short, READ THIS BOOK. It's like the not quite completely comic foil to 1984 as if written by Kurt Vonnegut. An epic, grand masterwork that will stay with you and keep you asking and wondering about the human condition, the human capacity for knowledge, and what of any of it matters in the face of the infinite universe and finite human authority. ...more

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Jul 12, 2024 GONZA rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: posseduto, otherland

There is no question that Orwell took inspiration from this book for 1984, and its claustrophobic atmospheres, despite all the glass, have profoundly influenced quite a bit of subsequent dystopian literature, whether it has to do with handmaidens or is about walls. The book is written in a fragmentary way and could even be compared to a descent into psychosis if it were not so linear in its plot. I would have preferred to read it at a time when the world was better, but then I would have waited ...more

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