Londres, 1984: el Gran Hermano controla hasta el último detalle de la vida privada de los ciudadanos. Winston Smith trabaja en el Ministerio de la Verdad reescribiendo y retocando la historia para un estado totalitario que somete de forma despiadada a la población, hasta que siente que no quiere contribuir más a este sistema perverso y decide rebelarse.

Escrita en 1948, esta novela es una de las críticas más feroces que jamás haya recibido cualquier forma de totalitarismo. Los mecanismos de control de la sociedad orwelliana recuerdan a los del nazismo y el estalinismo, y su magnífico análisis del poder y de la manipulación de la información la convierten en una novela de una vigencia estremecedora.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever...

A startling and haunting novel, 1984 creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the novel's hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions--a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.

Portrait

Eric Arthur Blair, más conocido por su seudónimo George Orwell, nació en India, estudió en Eton College y prestó sus servicios en la Policía Imperial. Estuvo destinado en Birmania de 1922 a 1927. Vivió varios años en la pobreza, primero en París y más tarde en Londres. Como resultado de esta experiencia escribió Sin blanca en París y Londres (1933), donde relata las sórdidas condiciones de vida de las personas sin hogar. Días en Birmania (1934), un feroz ataque contra el imperialismo, es también, en gran medida, una obra autobiográfica. En 1936 Orwell luchó en el ejército republicano durante la Guerra Civil española. El autor describe su experiencia en Homenaje a Catalunya (1938), uno de los relatos más conmovedores escritos sobre esta guerra y en el que se hace responsable al Partido Comunista Español y a la Unión Soviética del triunfo de la Falange. El camino a Wigan Pier (1937), es una crónica desgarradora sobre la vida de los mineros sin trabajo en el norte de Inglaterra. Su condena de la sociedad totalitaria queda brillantemente plasmada en una fábula, Rebelión en la granja (1945), basada en la traición de Stalin a la Revolución Rusa, así como en la novela 1984 (1949). Esta última ofrece una descripción aterradora de la vida bajo la vigilancia constante del Gran Hermano. Cabe citar entre otros escritos, la novela Que vuele la aspidistra (1936) y Disparando al elefante y otros ensayos (1950), ambas consideradas modelos de prosa descriptiva, y Así fueron las alegrías (1953), un recuerdo de sus difíciles años de estudiante. George Orwell is one of England's most famous writers and social commentators. Among his works are the classic political satire Animal Farm and the dystopian nightmare vision Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell was also a prolific essayist, and it is for these works that he was perhaps best known during his lifetime. They include Why I Write and Politics and the English Language. His writing is at once insightful, poignant and entertaining, and continues to be read widely all over the world. Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) was born in 1903 in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. The family moved to England in 1907 and in 1917 Orwell entered Eton, where he contributed regularly to the various college magazines. From 1922 to 1927 he served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, an experience that inspired his first novel, Burmese Days (1934). Several years of poverty followed. He lived in Paris for two years before returning to England, where he worked successively as a private tutor, schoolteacher and bookshop assistant, and contributed reviews and articles to a number of periodicals. Down and Out in Paris and London was published in 1933. In 1936 he was commissioned by Victor Gollancz to visit areas of mass unemployment in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) is a powerful description of the poverty he saw there. His unique political allegory, Animal Farm was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which brought him world-wide fame. Animal Farm (1945) is recognised as a classic of modern political satire and is simultaneously an engaging story and convincing allegory. It was this novel, together with Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which finally brought him world-wide fame. Nineteen Eighty-Four's ominous depiction of a repressive, totalitarian regime shocked contemporary readers, but ensures that the book remains perhaps the preeminent dystopian novel of modern literature. Orwell's fiercely moral writing has consistently struck a chord with each passing generation. The intense honesty and insight of his essays and non-fiction made Orwell one of the foremost social commentators of his age. Added to this, his ability to construct elaborately imaginative fictional worlds, which he imbued with this acute sense of morality, has undoubtedly assured his contemporary and future relevance. George Orwell died in London in January 1950.