Nineteen Eighty-Four

George Orwell's celebrated and always timely 1948 vision of a world subsumed in tyranny and war describes the process of events by which Winston Smith, a London clerk at the Ministry of Truth, comes to understand the true nature and aims of the government he works for, and portrays his doomed attempt to create a private life for himself and his lover, Julia. One of the bleakest political novels ever written, 1984 illustrates Orwell's despair that democracy could ever summon the strength to overcome totalitarianism in his lifetime.