Yevgeny Zamyatin - 'We'

'We' is the fictional diary of D-503, builder of the spacecraft INTEGRAL and citizen of Onestate. He begins the record hoping to describe the beauty and grandeur of the totalitarian society he lives in, but as the narrative progresses, his world is thrown into confusion as he falls in love with a resistance fighter named I-330.

Recognised as one of the key inspirations for George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', Zamyatin's novel has a somewhat strange history: after the book was banned by the Soviet censorship bureau in 1921, a rough translation appeared in England in 1924. Facing trouble at home over a book that had not been published in his own language, Zamyatin was eventually exiled to Paris in 1931, where he died in 1937. 'We' was not published in Russia until 1988.

I read this book in the Penguin Classics edition, translated by Clarence Brown. The cover artwork features Anton Brezinski's 'Painting of Futuristic Buildings and City' (above), but I also like the artwork featured on the Vintage edition (below).