295. We

We
Yevgeny Zamyatin
1924
Around 225 pages

Only 5 more books to go before the big 300! To be honest, the entries before that milestone seem rather blah. But We is arguably one of the most influential novels of all time. Even if Huxley claims he never heard of it before writing A Brave New World. Not sure I buy that. 

It's been a few hundred years since One State's conquest of the entire world. In One State's society, everybody is assigned a number and lives in glass apartment buildings monitored by the Bureau of Guardians. One State plans to build a spaceship, Integral, and use it to invade and conquer other planets. Integral's chief engineer, D-503, meets a woman, I-330, who flouts the laws of One State. Does this sound familiar?

That's the wonderful thing about doing this List chronologically. You realize that the work you regarded as highly original had actually been done before. I really don't care about who did something first though. I think all great authors stand on the shoulders of giants, and Orwell and Huxley improved on this formula. 

I'm not the biggest dystopian fiction fan, but it's cool seeing the genre evolve this way. 

 

RATING: ****-

Interesting Facts:

We was the first novel banned by the Soviet censorship board.

Zamyatin is considered one of the first Soviet dissidents. 

He died in poverty in Paris after being exiled.

UP NEXT: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Something tells me I could do without this Mann in my life.