Introduction by Will Self

The first modern dystopian novel which inspired both Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World 
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Zamyatin reminds us, Adam did not wish to be happy, he wished to be "free"

Precursor to much more famous works by Huxley and Orwell, this antidote to totalitarianism, written by someone who genuinely knew what that sort of existence was like, is the anti-Stalinist dystopia to beat them all - even Brave New World, 1984, and Koestler's Darkness at Noon

Two of the most iconic novels in the English language - Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and 1984 by George Orwell - owe an enormous debt to Zamyatin. We is the ur-text of science-fiction dystopias...the product of a powerful imagination

One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century

Zamyatin's dystopic novel left an indelible watermark on 20th-century culture, from Orwell's 1984 to Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil.Randall's exciting new translation strips away the Cold War connotations and makes us conscious of Zamyatin's other influences, from Dostoyevski to German expressionism

The best single work of science fiction yet written

A syncretic, wildly imaginative text...a passionately literary work. This book reads like nothing else on earth before or since

'We was a prophetic book not because Zamyatin gazed into a crystal ball but because he saw the likely consequences of what people were thinking in the first years of the Soviet Union. That is why we think Zamyatin, Huxley and Orwell better than the science fiction writers - because they trace conditions back to sources in the mind

Yevgeny Zamyatin was born in 1884. He was arrested as a student in 1905 by Tsarist police for being a Bolshevik. He was then sent to England to work on Russian ice breakers in Newcastle. He has been described as a 'dapper, tweedy naval engineer'. He was also a fan of H.G. Wells . After the revolution in 1917 he returned to Russia and worked for Gorky. He was arrested again by the Soviet authorities in 1919 and 1922 and forbidden to publish his work. In 1931 Stalin surprisingly granted him permission to move to Paris. He died there in March, 1937.

As relevant today as when it was first published, We is the first modern dystopian novel which inspired both Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World. 
 
The citizens of the One State live in a condition of 'mathematically infallible happiness'. D-503 decides to keep a diary of his days working for the collective good in this clean, blue city state where nature, privacy and individual liberty have been eradicated. But over the course of his journal D-503 suddenly finds himself caught up in unthinkable and illegal activities - love and rebellion. 
 
Banned on its publication in Russia in 1921, We is the first modern dystopian novel and a satire on state control that has once again become chillingly relevant.

A seminal work of dystopian fiction that foreshadowed the worst excesses of Soviet Russia, Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is a powerfully inventive vision that has influenced writers from George Orwell to Ayn Rand. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the Russian with an introduction by Clarence Brown. 
 
In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful 'Benefactor', the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity - until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, We is the classic dystopian novel and was the forerunner of works such as George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It was suppressed for many years in Russia and remains a resounding cry for individual freedom, yet is also a powerful, exciting and vivid work of science fiction. 
 
Clarence Brown's brilliant translation is based on the corrected text of the novel, first published in Russia in 1988 after more than sixty years' suppression. 
 
Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937) was a naval engineer by profession and writer by vocation, who made himself an enemy of the Tsarist government by being a Bolshevik, and an enemy of the Soviet government by insisting that human beings have absolute creative freedom. He wrote short stories, plays and essays, but his masterpiece is We, written in 1920-21 and soon thereafter translated into most of the languages of the world. It first appeared in Russia only in 1988. 
 
If you enjoyed We, you might like George Orwell's 1984, also available in Penguin Classics. 
 
'the best single work of science fiction yet written' 
Ursula K. LeGuin, author of The Left Hand of Darkness 
 
'It is in effect a study of the Machine, the genie that man has thoughtlessly let out of its bottle and cannot put back again' 
George Orwell, author of 1984

Yevgeny Zamyatin (Author) Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937) was a naval engineer by profession and writer by vocation, who made himself an enemy of the Tsarist government by being a Bolshevik, and an enemy of the Soviet government by insisting that human beings have absolute creative freedom. He wrote short stories, plays and essays, but his masterpiece is We, written in 1920-21 and soon thereafter translated into most of the languages of the world. Clarence Brown (Introducer, Translator) Clarence Brown was a pioneer of Russian literature studies and translation. His brilliant translation of We was based on the corrected text of the novel, first published in Russia in 1988 after more than sixty years' suppression.

In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful &lsquo;Benefactor&rsquo;, the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity &ndash; until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, We is the classic dystopian novel and was the inspiration for George Orwell&rsquo;s 1984. It was suppressed for many years in Russia and remains a resounding cry for individual freedom, yet is also a powerful, exciting and vivid work of science fiction

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Clarence Brown

We is a shapely work of the imagination. As the first major anti-utopian fiction it famously stood both the Soviet Union and the Wellsian scientific romance upside down.

In a glass city composed of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful 'Benefactor', the citizens of OneState live their lives without passion or agency. That is until D-503, a man tasked with bringing the Revolution to the stars, meets a remarkable woman . . . 
 
Supressed in Russia for decades, Zamyatin's dystopian masterpiece prophesized the worst excesses of the Soviet Union, while creating an enduring and vivid vision of what future societies might look like - a vision that would inspire George Orwell's 1984 and many subsequent dystopias.

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The best single work of science fiction yet written

We is a shapely work of the imagination. As the first major anti-utopian fiction it famously stood both the Soviet Union and the Wellsian scientific romance upside down.

Books by Yevgeny Zamyatin

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