Zamyatin: We

Zamyatin’s We is one of the best known Russian novels of the twentieth century. It is, at the same time, an anti-Utopia, a work of futuristic science fiction and a dire warning of the dangers of the regimented, totalitarian state. Completed in 1920, it was not published in Russia until 1988, for reasons of political censorship. Xamyatin’s novel anticipates Huxley’s Brave New World and was an acknowledged influence on Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. It also represents the highest achievement of Zamyatin’s experimental methods of ‘neo-realism’.