We: 200 Word Reviews #13

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is a groundbreaking, forward-thinking, and experimental gem of mildly unpleasant reading.

D-503 lives in the United State, where everyone sleeps in glass-houses, wears the same clothes, and march in unison as they follow the Timetables, proscribing how each moment of the day must be spent, under the watchful eye of the Well-Doer. D-503 is the builder of the Integral, a spaceship that will carry their philosophy of perfectly ordered happiness to other worlds. All is in its place, until he meets I-330, who leads him down a path of chaos in freedom.

Zamyatin writes D-503 in the confused and manic state for much of the novel, with trailing, chopping sentences and extreme quantities of enigmatic subtext. This leads to an opaque read with a plot and dialogue thread that is hard to follow, despite the obvious skill of Zamyatin as a writer. Overall, I just could not get lost in the story. I couldn’t forget I was reading a one hundred-year-old Russian novel pioneering the dystopian/Utopian genre.

We is an excellent novel for anyone interested in the history of political literature or the influences of Orwell and Huxley, but not anyone looking for a good read.