By Robert Harris
Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in London on Wednesday, June 8, 1949, and in New York five days later. The world was eager for it. Within 12 months, it had sold around 50,000 hardbacks in the UK; in the U.S. sales were more than one-third of a million. It became a phenomenon. Sixty years later, no one can say how many millions of copies are in print, both in legitimate editions and samizdat versions. It has been adapted for radio, stage, television and cinema, has been studied, copied and parodied and, above all, ransacked for its ideas and images. As I write, the Mail is reporting that 'town halls are routinely using controversial Big Brother surveillance laws to spy on their own employees'; the Los Angeles Times is describing a Republican Party consultant as 'a master of the black art of political newspeak'; The Village Voice is citing 'a ripe example of doublethink'; and The Guardian is profiling a community leader 'attacked as part of the PC thought police'. I could cite hundreds more examples. Nineteen Eighty-Four may not be the greatest novel ever written, but it is certainly the most influential. Even at the time, people knew that something remarkable had occurred. 'Momentous', was how Lionel Trilling in The New Yorker hailed its arrival.
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