We
By Eugene Zamiatin
Translated by Gregory Zilboorg
Transaction Large Print Edition Transaction Publishers: 2000
ISBN: 1-56000-477-0
Genre: Classics, Science Fiction
Reviewed by Auggie Moore - August 29, 2007
We is one of the first, and most influential, dystopian novels to have ever been written. First published in English in 1924, this book, by the Russian born author, Eugene Zamiatin (alternate spellings: Evgenii Ivanovich Zamiatin, Yevgeny Zamyatin), served as the foundation for George Orwell's novel 1984 and all other dystopian novels to follow such as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. (Orwell openly acknowledged his debt to Zamiatin, and admitted that We greatly influenced 1984.) The story is set some 500 years in the future in a city called the United State (in some translations, it is called the Onestate) that is separated from the rest of the world by a huge green wall. The United State was originally peopled by the survivors of a horrific two-hundred year war, and now, its residents are so accustomed to life behind the wall that they do not question their self-imposed imprisonment where everything from when, where, and with whom you have sex with, to when you sleep is ordained by the state.
United State is an ideal world. Everything is clean and well organized, and the Well-Doer (Benefactor) takes care of everyone needs. Every resident of the United State is an integral cog in a well-ordered machine, and the book's narrator, D-503, is one such contented cog. (The residents of the United State don't have names, just letter and number designations). D-503 is a mathematician who helped build the spacecraft Integral, which is destined to take the ideology of the Unite State to all the peoples of the Universe. For D-503, one day is much like the next, that is until his orderly existence is disrupted when he meets the female dissident, I-330 and his world begins to fall apart.
We is a true literary classic. Zamiatin used a unique literary devices to tell his story, in the form of a narrator who is not always in control of the story. As well, We is the archetype of the modern dystopia, and at the time this book was written, We was not only an innovative novel, but it also featured an unprecedented storyline. Within the pages of We, Zamiatin also shows what can happen when a society begins to destabilize, and the lengths to which those in power will go in order to ensure that they remain in power.
In addition, We is a haunting story that engenders a host of troubling questions...
Can you be imprisoned if your prison is the only world you know? Can you be unhappy if you don't know what happiness is? If the state provides for all your needs, do you have the right to ever question what the state does or requires of you? What is the role of personal relationships in a society where individuality is a non-concept? Most important, does a society have the right to impose its ideology on another group simply because they think that you would be doing them a favor?
We has been a classic since it was first written - and banned - in Russia by the Soviets. This large print edition of We was translated into English by Gregory Zilboorg. A 16-point-font is used in the main body of the text, with headers in a larger type face. This large print edition of We makes this significant literary work accessible to visually impaired readers who need large print books. This is also a book that will fascinate readers new to the story, as well as those returning to read it anew.
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