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The book publisher Penguin is printing more copies of George Orwell's dystopian classic "1984" in response to a sudden surge of demand.
On Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning the book was #1 on Amazon's computer-generated list of best-selling books.
[...] "We put through a 75,000 copy reprint this week. That is a substantial reprint and larger than our typical reprint for '1984,'" a Penguin spokesman told CNNMoney Tuesday evening.
[...] According to Nielsen BookScan, which measures most but not all book sales in the United States, "1984" sold 47,000 copies in print since Election Day in November. That is up from 36,000 copies over the same period the prior year.
When the submitter visited amazon.com, the book was ranked #3.
Additional coverage:
- Los Angeles Times
- The New York Times (may be pay-walled)
- 9News
- The Washington Post (owned by the founder of amazon.com)
- The Guardian
- The Man Who Invented the Science Fiction Paperback
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(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday January 26 2017, @05:53PM
I have read the book a few times over the years. First when I was young and then later again at university. My impression at youth was how right it was (evil government etc etc) and as I grew older how over-rated and misunderstood it was. People focus to much on the whole surveillance society -- big brother bit and forget that it is in essence an anti-soviet book. A book by an author paid for by the CIA in its culture cold war between the west and soviet Russia. Which makes the surveillance society angle even funnier. Orwell's later, and in my opinion much better, books Animal Farm makes the anti-soviet connection more obvious.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:20PM
A book by an author paid for by the CIA in its culture cold war between the west and soviet Russia.
If true, that's one of the best uses of spook money ever.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @07:03PM
Seems unlikely. The CIA did fund the first movie adaptations of both books. But they also made significant changes to the stories to fit the CIA's desired narrative. [spyculture.com] You can read (most of) the CIA's file on Orwell here. [spyculture.com]
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday January 27 2017, @06:58AM
You do know that Orwell was a socialist? Went to Spain during the civil war, saw and took part in a libertarian socialist paradise and then the Stalinists showed up and next thing he was sneaking out of Spain so as not to be killed in the totalitarian purge. On arriving back in the UK the government kept him under pretty heavy surveillance.
The lesson he learned wasn't to be anti-socialist but to be anti-authoritarian.
In the 20th century, it was the socialist revolutions that got hijacked by the authoritarians, now it's the democratic west. Note that Trumps power base is the usual socialist/communist base, the unemployed/under employed/working class people who feel (rightly) that the powers that be are ignoring them and worse. It's the usual authoritarian playbook, a mixture of left (support the working class) and right (nationalism, law and order, xenophobia)