Title: 1984
Author: George Orwell
Series: –
Genre: Science Fiction, Political Fiction, Dystopian
Pages: 328
Published: 1949, Penguin Books
My Grade: 5 out of 5 posters

GOODREADS’ DESCRIPTION

The year 1984 has come and gone, but George Orwell’s prophetic, nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. 1984 is still the great modern classic of “negative utopia” -a startlingly original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing, from the first sentence to the last four words. No one can deny the novel’s hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions -a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.

MY REVIEW

Wow! Just wow. It has truly been a delight to read this extremely dark dystopian novel. After about ten pages I felt connection to this book because of the way it was written. It has now been 67 years since this book was first published, it came out right after WWII, it’s forever ago!! But you couldn’t tell (like with Lord of the Flies). I don’t know how to describe it, but the words Orwell used, the sentence structure, it just made so much sense and I felt the flow when I was reading it like I have never done before.

And then comes the story on top of that. Wow again! It is not a story in a way that the characters move around and do stuff all the time, not like Lord of the Rings for example, or Maze Runner. This is just simply about a man in a big-brother society who questions big brother. You get to follow his line of thought, you get to see him fall in love, and seemingly getting away with it all. I can’t really say anything that won’t spoil, but most of the book was just a long way towards the end where everything happened. I still don’t really understand how or why it ended like it did. The last page and what happened there, I totally get, but not the part before that. It was really a mindfuck-read. I didn’t expect it to be, but it really was. This book kind of reminded me of the movie Shutter Island (I haven’t read the book yet, Patient 97, but it is on my list).

It’s scary to think about really. I know it is a made-up story, but how can a country (or empire maybe? I don’t know what they called it) just so easily buy everything that Big Brother says? One day the news sadly announced that the chocolate ratio had gone down from 30g per week to 20g. And literally the next day the news announced that the chocolate ratio had increased to 20g and everyone is super happy about it. No questions whatsoever about the news the day before! It is the same with everything Big Brother tells them. Winston (the main character) understands how, but not the why. The end of the book explains why, and it is scary because that is probably true in reality too.

It is hard to write reviews without spoiling. To sum it up, it is an easy and very enjoyable read, you kind of have to be focused while reading it to not miss something, lots of things happen in the end and after it is all done, you can’t stop yourself from asking “what the fuck?” Definitely one of the best books I have ever read, so I strongly recommend everyone to read it, especially people who love dystopian future novels. Crystal clear five!