1984

New Classic Edition

By: George Orwell

Narrated by: Simon Prebble

Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

Blackstone Publishing presents a new recording of this immensely popular book.

One of the most celebrated classics of the twentieth century, Orwell’s cautionary tale of a man trapped under the gaze of an authoritarian state feels more relevant now than ever before.

George Orwell depicts a gray, totalitarian world dominated by Big Brother and its vast network of agents, including the Thought Police, a world in which news is manufactured according to the authorities’ will and people live tepid lives by rote.

Winston Smith, the hero with no heroic qualities, longs only for truth and decency. But living in a social system in which privacy does not exist and where those with unorthodox ideas are brainwashed or put to death, he knows there is no hope for him. He knows even as he continues to pursue his forbidden love affair that eventually he will come to destruction.

The year 1984 has come and gone, yet George Orwell’s nightmare vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is still the great modern classic of negative Utopia. It is a prophetic and haunting tale that exposes the worst crimes imaginable: the destruction of freedom and truth.

©1949 Harcourt Brace and Company, renewed 1977 Sonia Brownell Orwell (P)2007 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

• Nominee, 2008 Audie Award, Classic

"It is probable that no other work of this generation has made us desire freedom more earnestly or loathe tyranny with such fullness." (New York Times, 1949)

An obvious classic.

What can be said? Whether or not you read it in high school, this is a wonderful reading of a powerful and moving classic. Highly recommended for (re)reading.

awesome book

loved this book. can't believe it took me so long in my life to read it.

Brilliant, Prescient, Well-written, and Accessable

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

This was an extremely well-written, engaging, and accessible book--I strongly recommend it. I worried that it couldn't live up to the hype (especially as a thirty-year old reading it for the first time in 2017). I'm happy to report it was, for me, thought provoking and satisfying.

I had a strong reaction to the book's commentary on systemic, governmental falsification of information. Obviously, in the era of Trump, its trite to point out the relevance of these themes. Even so, being trite doesn't make it wrong.The hypothetical mechanics by which the ministry of truth constantly changes written history (perpetually falsifying and cross referencing governmental records to make the false history internally consistent) is breathtaking and anxiety inducing. In Act III, Ingsoc's philosophy of extreme, collective subjectivism is laid bare. That dark philosophy underscores everything in Oceania--its all downright nightmarish.

I was also impressed (and disturbed) by the fictional population's psychological processes. Citizens of Oceania reject irrefutable evidence, and they can (and regularly do) turn off their logical/critical-thinking abilities, so as to maintain the world-view of their the preferred political party. Then, when they need to justify something that, on some intuitive level, they know is wrong, they can bring the full force of critical thinking to bat and delude themselves into believing their party righteous. I sincerely wish I didn't see these mental gymnastics used in real life to justify support for incompetent and evil politicians, but I most certainly do.

Reading the descriptions of the 15-minute hate gave me a gross feeling as well. It shows the human capacity for tarantism, self-delusion, knee-jerk violence, xenophobia, and general fear/hatred of the unknown. It all has the ring of truth to it. This book is depressing, but it is not depressing in that some particular event or tragedy moved me. Rather, its depressing in that the longer you spend in the world of 1984 the more you wonder if a population that was so tightly controlled (including control by a very sophisticated effort to make dissident thought impossible) could--someday--be returned to something approximating life. There is a creeping fear throughout the whole book that change is impossible and that human history has frozen at one horrible (yet perpetual) point. Essentially, Orwell creates something of a hell on earth, and the feeling you get spending time there is hard to shake once the book is completed.

Any additional comments?

This book is remarkable in a number of other ways. It raises the question of whether thoughts are dependent on language, which is, to me, an interesting one. In the world of philosophy and science, there is disagreement on this point. Even so, the idea of a government slowly but steadily reducing the vocabulary of the citizenry, in an effort to make "thought crime" literally impossible, is an interesting contribution to the conversation. I've been persuaded by the works of Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker that there is a universal, unconscious language of thought (i.e., mentalese), so I'm not sure the government of Oceania would actually eliminate all unorthodox thought. I expect it would, however, make it much more difficult to clearly organize, communicate, or resist. This is a large contributor to the hellish sense of hopelessness. I strongly recommend against skipping the Appendix printed after the conclusion of the story: The Principals of NewSpeak. This gets into a lot of the philosophy of language stuff, and its fascinating.

A telling of a dark totalitarian controlled world

Must "read" for anyone who is deeply interested in politics, and a warning of possibilities.

Not far from what will inevitably happen

A book written so long ago will seem to eerily come true in the not so distant future. Great story, a classic that we can all learn from.

Great political fiction.

Thought-provoking. This book definitely made me think about the value of language and the ability to think and speak freely.

A must read.

The story has alarming parallels with our current times and where we are trending as a society. A must read for all teens and adults.

Perception changes with age

Journal entry 1: This is a great story, While I'm not fully Orwell's intentions in writing this, it seems he hit the nail on the head as I write this in the same week that NY Time announced there own internal ministry of truth. it seems Orwell's 1984 is becoming reality more and more. he must have been a very intuitive person.

A relevant classic

Rereading this book from old classes; it seems as though my timing is pretty good. Too much seems real in current democratic Republics. Replace a few key words and the listener can easily imagine themselves living a similar reality. My only critique is how male readers try to sound feminine. Not unique to this performance; otherwise it was an enjoyable listen for me.

Correlations with Reality

Wow. Who would have thought that, so many years later, such a book would be translated into reality? If you pay attention, there are multiple examples of "double-think," "thought police," and others; the "thought police" are the social media mobs that gang up on people to get them fired from their jobs and essentially expelled from public social life, and some examples of "double-think" are the redefining of man and woman - such as how a woman is the only sex that is able to physically bear a child, but to be politically correct (double-thinking) would be to submit to the idea that men can be women and women can be men - that they're interchangeable - and so men can bear children and women can produce sperm.

We see in reality how the regime is taking hold in the Western world, and how so-called "thought-police" seek social justice in such a way that would imprison and force re-education on those who would refuse to call a woman a man and submit to her version of reality due to gender dysphoria - which many young people have been found to regret doing later in life or grow out of if given the opportunity.

I believe reading this book and understanding such modern correlations is more important than ever. One has to wake up and stand up to "big brother," that the regime may not enforce its power before it is so unbelievably impossible to resist.