1984

Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its apocalyptic vision comes ever closer to fruition. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmare vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of modern life — the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language, and the discrediting of objective truth. Writing in London in 1948, Orwell imagined the world of 1984 to be a grey, bleak place where a government watchdog — Big Brother — sees all.