Kim Miller
A not too distant future dystopia where everything is made of glass, even the walls between rooms and units, so everything is constantly under surveillance. People walk to work in ordered four-abreast columns, relationships are allowed by the hour through application and permission slips, it's the full catastrophe. D-503 is the lead engineer of a rocket ship (also glass) designed to take the world order into space but he's worried. The concept of the square root of minus one, the foundation of imaginary numbers, occupies his mind. And imagination is outlawed.
This is the novel that Orwell says is the foundation of his 1984. I read the translation by Mirra Ginsburg which is said to have the best rendering of Zamyatin's sardonic humour. I've had to put this review under a different translator as the Ginsburg one isn't listed by the site - and it won't accept me trying to add it.
A not too distant future dystopia where everything is made of glass, even the walls between rooms and units, so everything is constantly under surveillance. People walk to work in ordered four-abreast columns, relationships are allowed by the hour through application and permission slips, it's the full catastrophe. D-503 is the lead engineer of a rocket ship (also glass) designed to take the world order into space but he's worried. The concept of the square root of minus one, the foundation of imaginary numbers, occupies his mind. And imagination is outlawed.
This is the novel that Orwell says is the foundation of his 1984. I read the translation by Mirra Ginsburg which is said to have the best rendering of Zamyatin's sardonic humour. I've had to put this review under a different translator as the Ginsburg one isn't listed by the site - and it won't accept me trying to add it.