The ministry of truth : the biography of George Orwell's 1984 / Dorian Lynskey.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lynskey, Dorian, author.

Contributor:

Class of 1924 Book Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Orwell, George, 1903-1950. Nineteen eighty-four.

Orwell, George.

Science fiction, English--History and criticism.

Science fiction, English.

Dystopias in literature.

Totalitarianism in literature.

Physical Description:

xix, 355 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First American edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Doubleday, [2019]

Summary:

"1984 isn't just a novel; it's a key to understanding the modern world. George Orwell's final work is a treasure chest of ideas and memes--Big Brother, the Thought Police, Doublethink, Newspeak, 2+2=5--that gain potency with every year. Particularly in 2016, when the election of Donald Trump made it a bestseller ("Ministry of Alternative Facts," anyone?). Its influence has morphed endlessly into novels (The Handmaid's Tale), films (Brazil), television shows (V for Vendetta), rock albums (Diamond Dogs), commercials (Apple), even reality TV (Big Brother). The Ministry of Truth is the first book that fully examines the epochal and cultural event that is 1984 in all its aspects: its roots in the utopian and dystopian literature that preceded it; the personal experiences in wartime Great Britain that Orwell drew on as he struggled to finish his masterpiece in his dying days; and the political and cultural phenomena that the novel ignited at once upon publication and that far from subsiding, have only grown over the decades. It explains how fiction history informs fiction and how fiction explains history."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

History stopped

Utopia fever

The world we're going down into

Wells-world

Radio Orwell

The heretic

Inconvenient facts

Every book is a failure

The clocks strike thirteen

Black millennium

So damned scared

Oceania 2.0

Afterword.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [281]-332) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Class of 1924 Book Fund.

ISBN:

9780385544054

0385544057

OCLC:

1101643224