The original, of course, is by George Orwell (born Eric Blair in India in 1903). It was published in 1949, when Orwell was already seriously ill with tuberculosis. He died in 1950.

So, the year we've just said goodbye to marked the 75th anniversary of the publication of 1984, and Audible's 3.5-hour adaptation was released on 4 April 2024, exactly 40 years after the date of key protagonist Winston Smith's first "diary entry".

Given all that, I'm coming a bit late to the party. But definitely better late than never, as this was a REALLY good bit of audio-theatre. Billed by Audible as "an immersive listening experience", and highly commended by Audiofile, Joe White's adaptation combines monologue, dialogue, sound effects that both inform and add atmosphere, and a brilliantly mood-resonant score.

Andrew Garfield and Cynthia Erivo bring Winston and Julia convincingly to life, and Andrew Scott is creepily, bone-chillingly brilliant as O'Brien.

The adaptation kept me riveted throughout the train journey from Cefalu to Catania, the sunny landscape outside contrasting starkly with the dystopian grey of the story. Later that evening, I finished it.

It still lingers with me. Especially when, just the following day, I came across an article by Klaus Neumann, noting how right-wingers around the world "have succeeded in changing public discourse and creating an alternative universe by introducing an alternative vocabulary".


It's perhaps a bit lazy to illustrate this post with shots from North Korea (2015). Yes, there are some resonances, but a) NK does not entirely reflect Orwell's world, and b) I don't want to suggest that it's only this kind of state that he's warning us about

***

I was still at school when I read 1984. We're talking the 1970s, with the eponymous year still fairly comfortably in the future. It was school bus reading, along with Graham Greene and Henry James and so many others.

Of course, I remembered the details that have become cultural references. Big Brother. Always watching. Thoughtcrime. Doublethink. Newspeak. I remembered the atmosphere, bleak and oppressive. I remembered something of the character of Winston Smith. I definitely remembered the rats...

I'd forgotten the betrayals, which hit me massively this time.

And I'd actually forgotten that this starts out as a love story. Which is a weird thing to forget, as it's the whole point. By breaking Winston and Julia, and making them betray each other, the state apparatus has completely hollowed them out. They're not killed. They're returned to society. But they're empty. And Winston now loves Big Brother...



It's a story that still has enormous power.

A state attempt to keep everyone under surveillance 24/7; to obliterate/rewrite the past; to railroad all thinking; to eliminate creativity; to make everyone distrust everyone else; to take away all the simple joys of life; to foster hate (with the daily Two Minutes Hate and the institution of Hate Week); to erode compassion and family bonds; to generate a personality cult -- there are so many areas where we have been, and still are, uncomfortably close to these practices, and now other actors aside from the state are implicated, making it all so much more insidious...

Stephen Groening argues that "the techniques and technologies described in the novel are very much present in today's world", and its message is by no means limited to hardcore dictatorships. Robert Hassan affirms that "it can tell us a lot about contemporary politics and power, from Donald Trump to Facebook".

There are still so many sentences that resonate:

-- "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
-- "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
-- "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever."
-- "Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."

Shuddery...