1984

Published in June 1949, Nineteen Eighty-Four was the last book George Orwell completed in his lifetime, and it has shaped how the English language talks about power ever since.

Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting the past to match the present. Around him: perpetual war, total surveillance, and a Party that asks not merely for obedience but for belief. Orwell's subject is what happens to truth itself when a government decides it owns the facts — and the novel's terrible power is how reasonable each step towards that world is made to seem.