The Frame

by Yevgeny Zamyatin

This precursor to 1984 and Brave New World explores a futuristic world wherein uniformity is the order of the day; the characters are known by numerical designation, everything is tightly scheduled (from work to “free time” to sex), private property is abolished, and walls are made of glass so no one has any secrets. The main character fully embraces and defends this life in the beginning, until he becomes obsessed with a female number who turns out to be a resistance agent. Yet is it really futuristic? Zamyatin wrote We in the early 1920s, just after the Communist revolution; he was never able to publish We in Russia, because the book is so clearly anti-communist. This connection makes We almost even more trenchant than the dystopian novels that followed it–Orwell and Huxley exaggerated dangers they saw to make them apparent; Zamyatin almost didn’t have to. It’s a shame this book isn’t as well known as the other two.
Well Above Average