We - by Yevgeny Zamyatin (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

The chilling dystopian novel that influenced George Orwell while he was writing 1984, with a new introduction by Margaret Atwood and an essay by Ursula Le Guin

In a glass-enclosed city of perfectly straight lines, ruled over by an all-powerful "Benefactor," the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState are regulated by spies and secret police; wear identical clothing; and are distinguished only by a number assigned to them at birth. That is, until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. He can feel things. He can fall in love. And, in doing so, he begins to dangerously veer from the norms of his society, becoming embroiled in a plot to destroy OneState and liberate the city.

Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, We was the forerunner of canonical works from George Orwell and Alduous Huxley, among others. It was suppressed for more than sixty years in Russia and remains a resounding cry for individual freedom, as well as a powerful, exciting, and vivid work of science fiction that still feels relevant today. Bela Shayevich's bold new translation breathes new life into Yevgeny Zamyatin's seminal work and refreshes it for our current era.

Review Quotes

"Though there have been numerous excellent translations of We, Shayevich's best preserves the experimental qualities of Zamyatin's writing. . . . With its sharp, uneven edges and chaotic originality, Zamyatin's novel exposes the notion that human creativity is something that can be quantified, churned into an algorithm and sold as exact science for the fiction that it is."
-- New York Times Book Review

"The founding document of dystopian literature, written in the Soviet Union in 1921, comes in for a fresh translation. . . . Zamyatin's all-seeing state is sufficiently chilling. . . . Translator Shayevich does a good job of preserving [Zamyatin's] affectless, sometimes nearly robotic prose, and the book is highly readable--and indeed should be read. A science-fiction classic, many of whose contours have become all too real." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)