We (novel)
First English edition dust jacket, Dutton, New York.
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| Author | Yevgeny Zamyatin |
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| Original title | Мы |
| Translator | Various (list) |
| Cover artist | George Petrusov, Caricature of Aleksander Rodchenko (1933–1934) |
| Country | Soviet Union |
| Language | Russian |
| Genre | Dystopian novel, science fiction |
| Publisher | Avon Books |
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Publication date
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1920–1921 (written); 1988 (pub'd in USSR); 1993 (Penguin ed.) |
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Published in English
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1924 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 226 pages 62,579 words |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 27105637 |
| 891.73/42 20 | |
| LC Class | PG3476.Z34 M913 1993 |
We (Russian: Мы, translit. Mi) is a dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, completed in 1921. The novel was first published in 1924 by E. P. Dutton in New York in an English translation by Gregory Zilboorg. The novel describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state.
We is set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which assists mass surveillance. The structure of the state is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed F. W. Taylor-style. People march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people save by their given numbers. The society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the society. The individual's behaviour is based on logic by way of formulas and equations outlined by the One State.
One thousand years after the One State's conquest of the entire world, the spaceship Integral is being built in order to invade and conquer extraterrestrial planets. Meanwhile, the project's chief engineer, D-503, begins a journal that he intends to be carried upon the completed spaceship.
Like all other citizens of One State, D-503 lives in a glass apartment building and is carefully watched by the secret police, or Bureau of Guardians. D-503's lover, O-90, has been assigned by One State to visit him on certain nights. She is considered too short to bear children and is deeply grieved by her state in life.
O-90's other lover and D-503's best friend is R-13, a State poet who reads his verse at public executions.
While on an assigned walk with O-90, D-503 meets a woman named I-330. I-330 smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol, and shamelessly flirts with D-503 instead of applying for an impersonal sex visit; all of these are highly illegal according to the laws of One State.
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