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Cover of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

We

  • 224 pages · about 4 hours
  • First published 1924
  • 210 editions

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1 About this book

We is set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which assists mass surveillance. The structure of the state is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed F. W. Taylor-style. People march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by their given numbers. The society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the society. The individual's behavior is based on logic by way of formulas and equations outlined by the One State.

We is a dystopian novel completed in 1921. It was written in response to the author's personal experiences with the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, his life in the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond and work in the Tyne shipyards at nearby Wallsend during the First World War. It was at Tyneside that he observed the rationalization of labor on a large scale.

Good for readers who want: a classic and science fiction.

  • Classics
  • Science fiction
  • Dystopian fiction
  • Political fiction
  • Russian Satire
  • Political science
  • Biography
  • Satire

2 About Yevgeny Zamyatin

1884–1937

Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin (Russian: Евге́ний Ива́нович Замя́тин, IPA:; 1 February [O.S. 20 January] 1884 – 10 March 1937), sometimes anglicized as Eugene Zamiatin, was a Russian author of science fiction, philosophy, literary criticism, and political satire. The son of a Russian Orthodox priest, Zamyatin abandoned Christianity at an early age and became a Bolshevik.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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