Quote Originally Posted by Batman View Post
Finished this, cracking book, not as good as Lolita but still well worth a read.

Nabokov has a strange way of making really dark subject matters quite light hearted, his characters kind of remind me of Kafka's in their blase approach to serious situations.

Krug is a celebrity philosopher and when a new government comes into power called the Ekwilists who enforce equality upon everyone and believes that if no one is individual then everyone must be happy, Krug opposes this and the head of this new political party try to force him to publicly support them, they arrest his friends and everyone close to him and he still refuses to back down, eventually they take things up a level and its only right at the end of the book when you realize how far they are willing to go to get the support that they want. Oh and the head of this party is nicknamed The Toad, an name bestowed upon him when he was at school with Krug, yeah it turns out that Krug used to bully The Toad rather severely whilst they were at school.

one thing I would say is if you are going to read this then take a look at Hamlet first and familiarize yourself with the general story because there is a 20 page chapter devoted to it.

anyways, I'm finally going to be getting started on



Winston Smith is a low-rung member of the Party, the ruling government of Oceania. He works in the Ministry of Truth, the Party's propoganda arm, where he is in charge of revising history. He is but a small brick in the pyramid that is the Party, at the head of which stands Big Brother. Big Brother the infallible. Big Brother the all-powerful. In a totalitarian society, where individuality is suppressed and freedom of thought has its antithesis in the Thought Police, Winston finds respite in the company of Julia. Originality of thought awakens, love bloosoms and hope is rekindled. But what they don't know is that Big Brother is always watching...
lets see how this stacks up to Bend Sinister then