We - Zamyatin, Yevgeny

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Résumé :
First written in Russian in 1920 and first published in English in 1924, 'We' is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin, a Russian author of science fiction, philosophy, literary criticism, and political satire. The story takes place hundreds of years into a gloomy future, where the citizens live under the total control and surveillance of a police state, called One State. The country is made almost entirely out of glass, which makes it easier for the government to watch every move of its citizens. Citizens are expected to march in step, wear the prescribed uniforms, and are only able to refer to each other by their assigned numbers, rather than names. The main character is D-503, a mathematician who lives willingly under One State's strict rules until he meets and falls in love with I-330, a rebel who lives her life with the creativity and lust prohibited and feared by One State. ...

Biographie:
Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Russian writer and engineer born on February 1, 1884, in Lebedyan, Russia. Raised in an Orthodox household, Zamyatin showed an early love for literature and later studied naval engineering at the Saint Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. His revolutionary activities against the tsarist regime led to his arrest and brief exile, beginning a lifelong tension with authority that would shape his work.As a writer, Zamyatin became known for his critical social and political commentary, inspired by his experiences as a naval engineer and his time in England overseeing shipbuilding projects. These encounters with industrialism and modern machinery deepened his interest in the impact of technology on society-a theme central to his landmark dystopian novel We, published in 1920. In the 1930s, as Soviet censorship intensified, Zamyatin's work was officially banned, and he faced increasing isolation. Seeking freedom, he appealed directly to Stalin and was granted permission to leave, settling in Paris in 1931. Although his later years were marked by isolation, his influence endured, especially through We, which shaped the dystopian genre and inspired authors like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Zamyatin passed away in 1937, leaving a legacy celebrated for its bold critique of authoritarianism and prescient insights into the dangers of unchecked state control....

Sommaire:
Born in Russia in 1884, Yevgeny Zamyatin was one of those courageous and idealistic Communists who was willing to suffer for speaking out against the abuses of both the oppressive Tsarist monarchy and the quickly corrupted Soviet Union which supplanted it. As an early Bolshevik, Zamyatin enjoyed-at least initially-enough credibility after the October Revolution to continue to write philosophy and even political satire, becoming one of the first Soviet dissidents. This ended with his attempted publication in 1921 of his masterpiece, We, a novel about a futuristic police state that controlled not only every action of its citizens, but every thought and emotion as well. The parallels between his fictional One State and the emerging totalitarianism of the Communist Party were unmistakable, and We was the first work to be banned by the Soviet censorship board. Forced to look elsewhere for an audience, Zamyatin smuggled his work out of Russia and published it in the West. As a result, he was blacklisted entirely, and hence, to remain a writer, Zamyatin was forced to leave Russia. His petition for an exit visa to Stalin was granted (some say miraculously), though he never achieved the fame or genius outside Russia he had known within it. Zamyatin died in relative obscurity in Paris in 1937, five years after the publication of Brave New World, and twelve years before Nineteen Eighty-Four, two derivative works which would cement Zamyatin's place as one of the most influential authors of all time....