We

When I first got into dystopian literature as a teenager, I read We. I had mostly forgotten about it until recently, referenced by Gary Shteyngart in his autobiography. We is an important novel in the sense that it is a logical antecedent to 1984. Zamyatin's Benefactor becomes Orwell's Big Brother (and so on). More interesting (and less obvious) is the antecedent for We, correctly pointed out by Clarence Brown in his introduction as being H. G. Wells. There are moments (particularly when the Integral spaceship is launched) that are on the side of early science fiction. There is also a very ‘British’ sense of humour in We (Zamyatin lived in England for two years). As in many other dystopias, Zamyatin highlights the limitations of authoritarian rule: there is the posited trade-off between freedom and happiness. The novel ends with One State's citizens lobotomised, such that they lose imagination. The parallels with Communist Russia should be evident. That said, Zamyatin (through his characters) notes that just as no number is the final one (given the notion of infinity), so will no state system ever endure – revolution will come again. Eight out of ten.

By Yevgeny Zamyatin