We

As mentioned a few days ago, I have begun reading Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian novel, We. First published in 1924 -- on the heels of the Russian Revolution, We, served as a source of inspiration to George Orwell's 1984.

Here's a synopsis of the book from Powell's Books:

Inside its glass dome the One State is a place of mathematical precision, a community where everything belongs to everyone, and integrity, clarity, and unerring loyalty reign over all. D-503, Builder of the Integral, is an honest Cipher, ashamed of the hairy hands that link him to a barbaric ancestry. And yet he is tormented by the figure v-1, that impenetrable x, the legacy that makes him lust, imagine, that has given him a soul. Consumed by his sickness and obsessed with the mysterious I-330, he escapes outside the Wall, to where the humans are wild, the land is green, and plots to overthrow The Benefactor and return his civilization to natural chaos are rampant. Only The Operation can return order to the perfect world, and allow reason to win.

The writing style of the author is very odd and is certainly not what the average western reader is accustomed to. It is sort written in a staccato-like rhythm -- if you can call it a rhythm at all. Another way to describe the prose could be to say that it's written like a stream of consciousness whereby that consciousness is a bit truncated!!

Be that as it may, the book looks intriguing. My guess is I won't quote from it as much as I did for 1984 simply because its phraseology will look out of place in short snippets. That's only a guess at this point -- I'm only 20 pages in -- so we will see.