A predecessor to 1984 (the most awesome book in existence), it also deals with a vision of a dystopia far in the future. Zamyatin depicts a controllist state governed by something as impermeable as mathematics. No emotion is involved and the soul is seen as a disease. Although the situation is much more dispairing than the one shown in 1984, it also offers some hope as one still gets the impression of a resistance outside the green wall. Despite the "numbers" being completely brainwashed, the One State is a society on the brink of collapse. The Guardians are ultra paranoid of any abnormal activity, spying on the citizens more than normal. The book is written in the form of a journal addressed to the people of another planet. It justifies the One State and is an attempt to socialize the other planet's people before a possible invasion by men.

This book contains four very good essays -- one on the works of Evelyn Waugh, one on George Orwell, one on Aldous Huxley and a final one on the common threads running through the works of all three authors. The essay on Evelyn Waugh's works is particularly good. It points out alot of symbolism and motifs which I had missed (but which now seem obvious). This essay focuses primarily upon Waugh's use of architecture as a symbol of social values. However, it only covers Waugh's first four novels (Decline & Fall, Vile Bodies, Black Mischief and Handful of Dust). Similarly, the essay on Huxley only discusses his first two novels(Crome Yellow and Antic Hay) and Brave New World. Both authors continued to write brilliant satire throughout their lives (Huxley's After Many a Summer Dies the Swan comes to mind as an example). I wish the Greenblatt had expanded his study to include a representative cross-section of Waugh's and Huxley's works.