While reading ‘1984’, written by George Orwell, on the coloured chairs on the grass of Harvard University I did not realize the impact that this novel had on humankind. The society that Orwell illustrates feels unreal and distant compared to ours. However, after studying the novel in class I came to a different insight. Yet, we don’t live in a world where clocks are striking thirteen, but the similarities are present and of significance, especially the ones concerning our privacy. ‘1984’ is not
The Dispossessed Following World War I, novels describing utopias gradually decreased in number, until the genre almost went extinct in mid-century, being replaced by dystopias like the famous Nineteen-Eighty-Four written by George Orwell. Later on, in the mid-seventies, fuelled by the upsurge of social reform that began in the late sixties and continued into the new decade, new utopias graced the scene, the most memorable ones being Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia, Samuel R. Delany's Triton, and