Ohh so that’s where George Orwell found his inspiration for Nineteen Eighty-Four. I should have guessed as much by the blurb of this one: “the first modern dystopian novel and a satire on state control”; Orwell’s own words: “This is a book to look out for”.

D-503 is the narrator and We comprises his journals, as he begins to contemplate thoughts of a rebellious nature. The formula seems to be: Man lives in scary state-controlled environment. Man starts writing journal. Man starts to think for himself. Man meets sexy female rebel. Romance ensues. Rebellion begins to take shape. Etc, etc. You know how it ends.

The humans, or ciphers, as they are referred to, live inside the One State, ruled by The Benefactor, who insures that all the citizens/ciphers are happy. Sounds lovely doesn’t it? In that age-old Individual Vs. State political theme, The Benefactor has decided what happiness is, and what are the obstructions to happiness. Zamyatin bluntly explores the idea that happiness in intrinsically linked to order: reason, logic, and *shudder*, arithmetic. Note: If anything slightly mathematical scares the bejeebus out of you, you might want to avoid We.

While the book is said to have been a spiteful satire of Soviet Russia, I found that it takes a swipe at modernity and the Enlightenment. The One State’s obsession with eliminating the imagination and stubbornly proclaiming the triumph of logic and reason against any obstacle, is almost a cruel mockery of the great modern thinkers of yesteryear.

The translator Natasha Randall writes an interesting introduction wherein she describes Zamyatin’s fascination with the shapes and feelings of alphabetic letters. This sounds a bit strange until you actually read the novel, with characters such as D-503, his pink-ticket holder/bonking buddy O, who is always described as having a pink, round mouth, round figure, round fingers, and the “African-lipped” R, friend of rebel I-330, raw, aggressive, everything you’d imagine a letter R to be. Even I-330, with her triangular mouth and pointy eyebrows becomes an angular caricature of a woman. Zamyatin manages to create human characters that are visualised as giant alphabetic letters. Genius.

As much as this book is a startlingly intelligent and foreboding read, it’s also incredibly frustrating. D-503 and I-330 have a tumultuous relationship: One minute D is infatuated, a moment later he is ready to betray her to the One State. He has no absolutely no spine, and follows every whimsical change in loyalty. I -330 is a constant, enigmatic only because we see her through D-503’s blurry, inconsistent eyes.

Fans of Nineteen Eighty-Four who haven’t read this may find their beloved Orwell novel pale a little, but as Will Self says in the Introduction to this particular version, Orwell wrote in the decades after the Bolshevik revolution; Zamyatin penned We while in the heat of it.

I’m now going to leave you with the One State’s Imagination Policy:

Imagination

This is the worm that gnaws black wrinkles onto your forehead. This is the fever that chases you, and you run off into the distance even though this “distance” begins where happiness ends. It is the last barricade on the path to happiness. But be glad: It has been detonated already.

The path is clear.

The most recent discovery of State Science is the location of the Imagination: The pathetic cerebral nodule in the region of the Pons Varolii. Cauterise this nodule with X-rays three times and you are healed of your Imagination.