1924: We

Book Name: We

Author:Yevgeny Zamyatin

Genre: Dystopian

Year Published: 1924

Despite We being a Russian novel it was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988. However, it was published in English in 1924, 3 years after its completion. As a result, I will be using it for my 1924 blog entry, as well as my first blog entry for a foreign language novel. When compiling my list I did my best to make it as varied as possible, so of course I didn't want to only include books by English authors. However, I will more than likely be reading translated versions as sadly I don't have the time to translate and read foreign works though I do find it fun to try occasionally. Hopefully therefore the translations will reflect the original works accurately, fingers crossed!

So, it's actually been nearly a month since I finished We but I've been pretty busy due to Stage Managing a play amongst other things! Despite this, I still have a pretty strong memory of the book and in particular the style of writing used by Zamyatin. For a start, the book is written in the form of diary entries, which makes for nice, short chapters with the storyline broken up mostly by the daily thoughts and recollections of the protagonist, D-503. (Note, I wrote mostly because to be honest I can't 100% remember all the diary entry dates or indeed whether I actually thought about whether any days were skipped whilst I was reading it...)

Second, as you may note from the character's name, the book references a lot of mathematical concepts, such as the humans in One State being considered numbers rather than people or the fact that the ship being built is called the Integral. I was a little worried when I first set out to read this book actually as I'd heard lots of people mentioning maths in connection to it but actually, despite the fact that maths is a common theme throughout the book, there were hardly any times when this meant I didn't understand something. Even if I didn't, it wasn't something that was plot relevant anyway, which is always good.

This brings me to my final point about the way the book is written - the type of description used. Often when authors describe things they use fairly obvious adjectives e.g. big, blue eyes or a large, old house. I realise these are kind of boring examples but nevertheless they are a common way of describing objects and people in novels. In We, I felt like the description was a lot more, well, descriptive. Zamyatin mostly uses shapes and colours to vividly help the reader imagine One State in a way I've not really found in other books. It meant that I pictured people as bodies and teeth and eyes rather than a whole person or the world in squares, circles and reds. It was really very interesting and the main thing that I liked about the book.

Overall, I'd say that I did enjoy reading We, but it did take me a very long time for what was technically quite a short book at only 226 pages. This is because I had to on occasion leave it for a bit and then go back to it a few days later to try and get into it again. There's a section in the middle where I did start getting bored and wonder if anything was particularly going to happen but then everything kicked off and it was interesting again and indeed it had a pretty good ending, if one that was a little short perhaps. I don't think I'd read it again but what I may do is reread 1984 now that I've read this as it is cited to have been an influence on George Orwell's dsytopia, so it will be interesting to draw comparisons sometime :)

Other Books I Considered: A Passage to India - E.M. Forster

Books I Read Inbetween: A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin