On My Shelf: Ninteen Eighty-Four

During these times with election fever burning high around the nation, I think this masterpiece by George Orwell will make quite an appropriate read.

I will not summarise the story here but basically, the book is set in 1984 and the world is divided into three superstates, Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Each is constantly at war with one another, with no end in sight. Government controls every facets of human lives; from the books they read and the food they eat to their jobs, their minds, and even instincts.

Orwell brilliantly penned down with chilling realism the horror of a totalitarian government. Imagine living in a world where history changes everyday, where the past is what the government wishes it to be and where the present might not even exist at all. Imagine that whatever the government say will always be the truth and one has to believe in lies against his/her own rational reasonings.

The book is deeply philosophical, and an amateur reviewer like yours truly could never find words suitable enough to do the book justice. You have to read this yourself to grasp a sense of Orwell's (not so) fictional world. By the time you finish the book, you will find that we might not be that far from his depiction of future human civilisations.

The book is written in 1948 and although 1984 came and gone very much unlike the book's prophecies but, as one reviewer aptly puts it, there's always 1985.