1984

How does one go about reviewing this book? A book which has had so much already written about it?

How do I find myself having only just read this book? I have read a reasonable amount of Orwell, but until now, not this book. I have nearly read it a few times, but for whatever reasons I gave myself, chose something else.

I will say only that it is an incredibly relevant book. We see a phenomenon in the world where people believe things that are are simply not true. In the USA, Trump only flirted with the most minimal of truths, and his cry of ‘Fake News'. Anti-vaxxers, chemtrail looneys, QAnon. The ability for a country to control the information that its people receive - stand up China, and North Korea.

These things make this book relevant.

The following two excerpts I found particularly powerful.

“Did I not tell you just now that we are different from the persecutors of the past? We are not content with negative obedience, not even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us than an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation. In the old days the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it. Even the victim of the Russian purges could carry rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked down the passage waiting for the bullet. But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out. “-“Do not imagine you will save yourself, Winston, however completely you surrender to us. No one how has gone astray is ever spared. And even if we chose to let you live out the natural term of your life, still you would never escape from us. What happens to you here is for ever. Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”-“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”