Nineteen Eighty-Four

Book summary

In the superstate of Oceania, Winston Smith rewrites the past for the Ministry of Truth while Big Brother watches every screen and every face. He begins to keep a diary, then falls in love with Julia, two acts that the Party counts as crimes. Their secret leads them towards a resistance they cannot verify and an interrogator who knows them better than they know themselves. Orwell builds a world in which language itself is redesigned so that certain thoughts can no longer be formed. A novel about surveillance, memory and the last freedom — the freedom to say that two and two make four.