Book Recomendation 1: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

We’re starting a new series for the new year, it’s only gonna be occasional so don’t get too attatched. I’ve read a lot this holiday so I’m gonna tell you about some of the books I’ve read and will read in the future. This time, We, by Yevgeny, Zemlya- Zemlamitov..? Zeml-ae-tin… Zem-late-in..?

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is one of the most original novels to have come under my radar in quite some time. One of the OG dystopias, We depicts a society obsessed around numbers and iltellectualism and anti-iltellectualism, so pertinant to out post-truth era. Everyone lives in glass houses that they really should stop throwing metaphorical bricks at. You can only close the shutters when you fuck, quite understandably I think. There’s more to this dystopia than just that but it inspired genre efforts from such prestigious authors as allegedly-Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Ayn Rand, and Vladimir Nabokov.

I love 1984, it has a huge cultural impact but it is fairly unarguable it got most of it’s ideas from We, which is great because a book that we’re going to talk about down the line can take 1984‘s place in my top 5 books. So if you thought 1984 was an unforgivable slog, may I recomend, to you, We.