Yevgeny Zamyatin: We, Kartoniert / Broschiert

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We is a dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, written 1920-1921. It was first published as an English translation by Gregory Zilboorg in 1924 by E. P. Dutton in New York, with the original Russian text first published in 1952. The novel describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state. It influenced the emergence of dystopia as a literary genre. George Orwell claimed that Aldous Huxley's 1931 Brave New World must be partly derived from We, but Huxley denied this.

We is set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which assists mass surveillance. The structure of the state is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed F. W. Taylor-like. People march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by their given numbers. The society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the society. The individual's behaviour is based on logic by way of formulae and equations outlined by the One State.

The German TV network ZDF adapted the novel for a TV movie in 1982, under the German title Wir (English: We).

The novel has also been adapted, by Alain Bourret, a French director, into a short film called The Glass Fortress (2016). The Glass Fortress is an experimental film that employs a technique known as still image film, and is shot in black-and-white, which help support the grim atmosphere of the story's dystopian society. The film is technically similar to La Jetée (1962), directed by Chris Marker, and refers somewhat to THX 1138 (1971), by George Lucas, in the "religious appearance of the Well Doer". According to film critic Isabelle Arnaud, The Glass Fortress has a special atmosphere underlining a story of thwarted love that will be long remembered.

A Russian film adaptation, directed by Hamlet Dulyan and starring Egor Koreshkov, is in post-production as of May 2021, with a projected release sometime in the fall. (wikipedia. org)