We takes place in a distant future where humans are forced to submit their wills to the
requirements of the state under the rule of the all-powerful Benefactor and dreams are
regarded as a sign of mental illness. In a city of straight lines protected by green walls and
a glass dome a spaceship is being built in order to spearhead the conquest of new planets. Its
chief engineer a man called D-503 keeps a journal of his life and activities: to his
mathematical mind everything seems to make sense and proceed as it should until a chance
encounter with a woman threatens to shatter the very foundations of the world he lives in.
Written in a highly charged direct and concise style Zamyatin's 1921 seminal novel - here
presented in Hugh Aplin's crisp translation - is not only an indictment of the Soviet Russia of
his time and a precursor of the works of Orwell and the dystopian genre but also a
prefiguration of much of twentieth-century history and a harbinger of the ominous future that
may still lay ahead of us.
