Buy it from Amazon
| Illustrator | Natasha Randall |
| First Written | 1921 |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Origin | Russia |
| Publisher | Modern Library |
| ISBN-10 | 081297462X |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0812974621 |
| My Copy | library paperback |
| First Read | July 28, 2013 |
We
The writing really feels Russian, in a way that pleasantly surprised me. It's like a mix of Orwell, Nabokov, and Leskov.
Noted on July 28, 2013
'We' is a the prototype for a scifi dystopia. It predates 1984 and Brave New World, and largely sets the pattern for those books one the ones that follow it. But it's better, I'd say, and more vivid and fun to read.
Ten thousand years into the future, the One State covers the whole earth. Our protagonist is D-503, a numbered, faceless unit of society, who literally lives in a glass apartment and has his daily life arranged by the state's schedule. Of course, he runs into an attractive ne'er-do-well, who helps him see the totalitarian state for what it is, and sets in motion his inevitable rebellion and consequent defeat.
Noted on July 28, 2013
Natasha Randall's translation is just stunning.
I look at her pupils, skipping from one to the other, and in each of them I see myself: I am tiny, millimeterly, confined in these tiny, iridescent dungeons.
millimeterly!
Quoted on August 3, 2013
I am aware of myself. And of course, the only things that are aware of themselves and conscious of their individuality are irritated eyes, cut fingers, sore teeth. A healthy eye, finger, tooth might as well not even be there. Isn't it clear that individual consciousness is just sickness?
Quoted on August 3, 2013
Well, maybe you and everyone else are my shadows! Didn't I populate these pages with all of you? Not long ago they were just four-cornered, white deserts. Without me, would you have ever been seen by all those that I am leading down the narrow footpaths of these written lines?
I didn't actually say any of this to her, as you would expect. I know from my own personal experience: it is very cruel to pierce a person with doubts of his three-dimensional reality and suggest any other kind of reality.
Quoted on August 3, 2013
Here is the distribution: a ton has rights, a gram has duties. And this is the natural path from insignificance to greatness: forget that you are a gram, and feel as though you are a millionth part of the ton...
You, voluptuous, ruddy Venusians, you, smoke-blackened blacksmiths of Uranus: I hear your grumble in my own blue silence. But listen: everything that is great is simple. Listen: only the four rules of arithmetic are steadfast and eternal.
Quoted on July 28, 2013
And, like children, you will only swallow this bitter thing I am giving you if it is thoroughly coated with a thick adventuresome syrup.
Quoted on July 28, 2013
The thought had somehow never even entered my head before, but, well, it goes exactly like this: we, on Earth, are constantly walking over a bubbling, crimson sea of fire, hidden there, in the belly of the Earth. But we never think about it. But what if suddenly the fine crust of earth under our feet became glass, and suddenly we could see ...
I became glass. I saw into myself, inside.
Quoted on July 28, 2013
As I write this, I feel something: my cheeks are burning. Integrating the grand equation of the universe: yes. Taming a while zigzag along a tangent, toward the asymptote, into a straight line: yes.
Quoted on July 28, 2013