It plays on a lot of our insecurities around humanity and individuality. The plot was fantastic and I can see why other writers used this novel when exploring their own dystopian worlds. It works spectacularly well in a book like this because you feel as though you’re part of the revolution against the totalitarian government which is exhilarating. This allows you an insight into the mind of the protagonist, D-503, and you experience everything that he thinks and feels. Each chapter is called a ‘record’ and it’s a diary entry from the main character which means that the whole novel is in the first person. It’s taken me such a long time to get around to reading it but it was worth the wait since it’s now one of my favourite books. I’ve been wanted to read it ever since I found out that it was part of the inspiration for George Orwell’s 1984 which I love. However, it wasn’t published in the Soviet Union until 1988, over 50 years after Zamyatin died.

We, written in about 1919, is often considered to be the grandfather of the futuristic dystopia genre. It was the first work banned by Goskomizdat, the Soviet Union’s censorship bureau, in 1921 but it was published in English in 1924. Summary: We tells the story of the minutely organised United State, where all citizens are not individuals but only he-Numbers and she-Numbers existing in identical glass apartments with every action regulated by the “Table of Hours.” It is a community dedicated to the proposition that freedom and happiness are incompatible that most men believe their freedom to be more than a fair exchange for a high level of materialistic happiness. Genre: Science Fiction / Classics / Dystopia

We zamyatin