The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was the ultimate, the primal command.

Isolated on the island of Jura off the coast of Scotland, suffering from tuberculosis that would soon prove fatal to his life, George Orwell wrote 1984 with feverish intensity, in a race against time, between 1947 and 1948. On December 4, 1948, he sent the completed manuscript to the publishing house Secker and Warburg, and the book was published on June 8, 1949, just seven months before his death.

A prime example of political dystopian fiction, 1984 has contributed terms to the English language that soon became established in everyday speech, inspired films, television shows, plays, a ballet, an opera, an album by David Bowie, imitations, parodies, has been associated with the most diverse political spaces, from the Black Panther movement to the anti-communist Birch Society, has been interpreted in various ways, banned, and contested.

From the afterword by Katerina Schina

WHAT THEY WROTE ABOUT THE BOOK

No novel of the last century has had a greater influence than George Orwell's 1984. Atlantic

Orwell's novel is a warning for all mankind. It highlights how important it is to resist the control and oppression of the masses. Guardian

"We should not remember George Orwell as a man of numbers – 1984 will remain, not Nineteen Eighty-Four – but as a man of letters," wrote Paul Gray, "who wanted to change the world by changing the words we use to describe it." Time