A review by lalu
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Did not finish book. Stopped at 23%.
first read in 2017: 4 stars
London, 1984: England is part of "Oceania", one of the three super states into which the world has been divided after the Revolution. Winston's job at the Ministry of Truth is the "correcting" of old newspaper articles on order to reflect the current political and societal sitiuation - because what the Party says is and has always been the truth. Also: Big Brother is watching you.
In this almighty surveillance state Winston tries to start a revolution and gets subsequently brain washed.

"Nineteen Eighty-Four" didn't fully convince me as a novel, but the idea behind it is disturbingly impressive and shows alarming parallels to today's North Korea...

dnf'd in 2021 - Warning: strong language!
I had no urge to read this book again, but my book club chose it, so... I read 84 pages. What really struck me this time is the sexism. Already in the first chapter we encounter said sexism
He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones.
... antisemitism (when describing Emmanuel Goldstein, the "Enemy of the people")
It was a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard - a clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable, with a kind of senile silliness in the long thin nose [...]. It resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a sheeplike quality.
... and murder and rape fantasies about a female colleague
Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through his mind. He would flog her to death with a rubber truncheon. He would tie her naked to a stake and shoot her full of arrows like Saint Sebastian. He would ravish her and cut her throat at the moment of climax [...]. He hated her because she was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with her.
This could be seen as stylistic choices or whatever - but I hated it!
Expand filter menu Content Warnings