1985 (Anthony Burgess novel)
First edition
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| Author | Anthony Burgess |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Dystopian novel |
| Publisher | Hutchinson |
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Publication date
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2 October 1978 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 272 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 4036113 |
| 823/.9/14 | |
| LC Class | PZ4.B953 Ni PR6052.U638 |
1985 is a novel by English writer Anthony Burgess. Originally published in 1978, it was inspired by, and was intended as a tribute to, George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
1985 is in two parts. The first is a series of essays and interviews (Burgess is the voice of the interviewer and the interviewee) discussing aspects of Orwell's book. The second is a novella set in 1985, seven years in the future at the time of the novel's writing.
Rather than a sequel to Orwell's novel, Burgess uses the same concept. Based on his observation of British society and the world around him in 1978, he suggests how a possible 1985 might be if certain trends continue.
The main trend to which he is referring is the expanding power of trade unions. In the hypothetical 1985 envisioned in the book, the trade unions have become so powerful that they exert full control over society; unions exist for every imaginable occupation. Unions start strikes with little reason and a strike by one union usually turns into a general strike.
Another major theme of the novella is the rise of Islam as a major cultural and political force in Britain, due to large-scale immigration from the Middle East; London abounds with mosques and rich Arabs.
At the novella's beginning, the protagonist, Bev Jones, confronts the death of his wife. She was in a hospital when it caught fire. As the firemen's union was striking, the hospital burned to the ground. Bev is left alone with his daughter Bessie, who is thirteen years old but sexually precocious and unable to comprehend the difference between reality and fantasy, due to a thalidomide-like drug taken by her pregnant mother.
The death of his wife engenders in Bev a deep-seated hostility towards the union system – her last words were, "Don't let them get away with it". This is, however, not the first time Bev has been opposed to it, for he had previously been a history lecturer who stepped down as his work was considered expendable by the union-based system which favoured education of practical value.
Employed as a confectioner, he goes to work one day despite his union being on strike. For working during a strike, his union membership is revoked, making him effectively unemployable. Knowing that he will soon lose his home, he takes Bessie to a state-run facility where she will be cared for with other girls like herself.
Bev then becomes something of a vagrant, travelling around London and falling in with a group of similarly unemployable dissenters. With these, he engages in petty theft from shops to survive. Apprehended during one such sortie, he is sentenced to re-education at a state institution, which is neither a prison nor a psychiatric hospital, but contains elements of both.
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