We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Mirra Ginsburg Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of We
Book Review: "WE" is us and them are we
Summary: 5 Stars
Inspiring and Passionate about the human condition. Precedes Brave New World. The author's understanding of the Bible and Mathematics makes this Sci Fi beyond compare. Fear of the Individual is the theme. Societal confessions for thinking unacceptable thoughts. Has it all.I recommend this poetic and brilliant read to everyone.
Book Review: "We" is superior to both "1984" and "Brave New Worlds."
Summary: 5 Stars
Eugene Zamitian's "We" is better than Huxley's "Brave New Worlds" and Orwell's"1984," but is equal to Anthony Burgess' "The Wanting Seed." The reader will not be disappointed after reading "We," perhaps they will see a new world without privacy, especially when going through airport security when asked to take off their shoes by people who might also take those jobs because of having a foot fetish? "We" was written at the time the Soviet system was starting in Russia when Stalin inherited it from Lenin, a time not unlike now with people like U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, an equal of Laventrii Beria and an unelected leader, George the Second (George W. Bush, Jr.), and a conservative Republican regime, not a far cry from the dis-Utopia of Soviet Russia under Stalin who suppressed the writer's like Eugene Zamiatin, Bulgakov, and others. Perhaps we in this totalitarian regime will experience what the characters in "We" experienced with lack of privacy and freedom?Book Review: "Only the unsubduable can be loved"
Summary: 5 Stars
This novel (the edition I read was a translation from the Russian by Mirra Ginsberg in 1972) is an excellent satire by Yevgeny Zamiatin (or, Zamyatin). Reading it, I find it remarkable that Zamiatin was not sent to Siberia or executed in one of the many purges occurring in the Soviet Union at that time. Apparently, the book was never published in the Soviet Union. It appeared first in English in 1924 (and obviously had a major influence in the development of Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four") and then in Czech in 1927. The Soviet authorities began to put pressure on the author through the Writers' Union and, probably due to the help of Maxim Gorky, Zamiatin was allowed to leave for Paris in 1931 (he died in Paris in 1937). The story is an extrapolation of a totalitarian world. The population of Earth that have survived a 200-years war find themselves members of a single state (the One State) where imagination is considered a disease. In this society the individual does not count, only the multitude. The central character is D-503 (all the inhabitants are numbers in this State), a mathematician who is building a space ship to bring their "perfect" world and culture to others. The whole novel consists of D-503's journal. However, D-503 soon meets I-330, a woman who shows him that there are numbers in the One State that feel that the State is in error and are striving for a new revolution. He begins to have strong feelings for her. He thinks he is ill but he can't help himself. And, he must keep his feelings hidden from the Guardians, the One State's "protectors." What a terrific "read." I highly recommend it (as well as "1984" and "Brave New World"). As can be seen in the comments by the other reviewers, "We" is a great book to discuss: with respect to politics, history, science fiction, or literature.Book Review: 1984 all over again?
Summary: 5 Stars
We is a book all about beating the system. It follows one man's life through a journal he is writing to send on the spaceship, Integral, to primitive civilizations like us. The journal writing style and many other features reminded me greatly of 1984. This is a classic book about the impossibility of a true utopia. The love story that flows through the book ads intrigue and seems to parallel 1984 in several ways as well. The reader begins to feel the author of this journal's thoughts, regrets, and inner struggles. A true classic that few have read or even heard of that I believe should be added to every need to read list.Book Review: A Brilliant Cautionary Tale About Government Control!
Summary: 5 Stars
We was written before 1984 and Brave New World, and yet I never heard of it until coming across it on a store shelf! It's a haunting scifi story and too good not to tell others about. It is also similar in some ways to The Giver. Written in the form of the journals of a tormented genius, D-503 lives in a world so bizarre that it almost seems like he is inside a computer. Each "number" is almost identical, and most are expendable, but he is the builder of a great starship, therefore of importance to the One State, and so is granted more tolerance when his behavior gets eccentric. Life is totally regimented except for 2 personal hours each day, and even then, most numbers either go for a walk or get a coupon allowing them to have sex with a partner they have registered with. D-503 has one male friend, a Black poet who writes for the State, and a female partner who he shares with his friend. Like all oppressive states, this one has an underground, and D-503's life falls into disarray when he meets and falls in love with I-330, a mysterious woman of the resistance. There is little in this world that stands out, but the author focuses on facial features and body shapes that attract and repel him at the same time. His mind whirling in confusion, he goes to a doctor who says he is sick because he has developed a soul, and that the condition is "incurable." Yet he is given permission to be sick because he is so important. As the time for the ship's launch is at hand, to spread "perfect happiness" throughout the universe, the resistance bubbles to the surface, and the state devises a ghastly cure for imagination, the last shred of humanity that is left. Society explodes in chaos as numbers refuse to submit to the Great Operation that will take away their imagination, their resistance, and with it, their soul. To tell any more would ruin the story. A word of warning: DON'T read the introduction before the story, it tells how the story ends!