George Orwell's novel 1984, written in 1948, imagines a totalitarian surveillance state. Sales of 1984 have gone up in the past year.

Surveillance State, Real and Imagined: Reading George Orwell's 1984

The Leonard Lopate Show | Aug 7, 2014

George Orwell's chilling novel 1984 imagines a totalitarian surveillance state. Last year sales of the book soared after Edward Snowden revealed the United States' large-scale program to collect phone data of millions of American citizens. George Packer, New Yorker staff writer and author of the National Book Award-winning book The Unwinding, will be here August 19 to discuss 1984. Pick up a copy and see if you find parallels between Orwell's dystopian future and our current reality.

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