Originally published on June 8, 1949, George Orwell’s 1984 is a dystopian masterpiece of tremendous influence and enduring relevance. Orwell’s nightmare vision for 1984 is of a totalitarian world dominated by Big Brother and the Thought Police, which persecute independent thinking. Orwell’s world is one in which the news is manufactured by the authorities, no one is free, and individuality is obsolete.

1984 was the ninth and final book George Orwell completed in his lifetime. Parallels have been drawn between its subject matter and real-life instances of totalitarianism, communism, mass surveillance, and violations of freedom of expression. The novel uses several terms that have entered common usage in the English language including Big Brother, doublethink and thoughtcrime.

Though the year 1984 now exists in the past, Orwell’s novel remains an urgent call to become aware of the assaults on our personal freedoms, and to defend humankind’s most precious right: the freedom to have our own thoughts.