We (novel)

We (Russian: Мы, romanized: My) is a dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin (often anglicised as Eugene Zamiatin) that was written in 1920–1921. It was first published as an English translation by Gregory Zilboorg in 1924 by E. P. Dutton in New York. The original Russian text was first published in 1952; the novel was not published in Soviet Russia until 1988. The novel describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state, against which the protagonist, D-503 (Russian: Д-503), rebels. The book is considered a literary masterpiece as well as one of the greatest and most influential works of the 20th century. It influenced the emergence of dystopia as a literary genre. George Orwell said that Aldous Huxley's 1931 Brave New World must be partly derived from We, although Huxley denied this. Orwell's own Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Animal Farm were also inspired by We, as are many other contemporary dystopian novels.