"1984" is a novel by George Orwell (real name is Eric Arthur Blair) published in 1949 as caution about the destructiveness
of totalitarianism.
The novel setting is an imaginary future world in 1984 dominated by three perpetually warring totalitarian police states: Oceania, in which Britain has become Airstrip One, Eurasia and Eastasia. The world is controlled by a Party under possibly nonexistent Big Brother, and yet who seems to be ever present.
The hero, Winston Smith, is a minor party operative in one of these states. His longing for truth, justice and decency leads him to secretly rebel against the government. He keeps a secret diary. He also loves the like-minded Julia with whom he has an affair. In time, they are arrested by the Thought Police. Smith is seduced into self-betrayal by his superior. The ensuing interrogation, imprisonment and torture of Smith are all intended to break him physically, mentally and spiritually – a complete brainwash. Ultimately he is lead into a room which symbolizes a human being's ultimate destruction. In this room, Smith's spirit is utterly destroyed. Brainwashed and completely broken, he surrenders his identity to the state and even learns to love Big Brother.
Orwell's warning of the dangers of totalitarianism made a tremendous impact not only to his contemporaries but to readers, and even the title of his book became bywords for anything pertaining to modern abuses in the political arena, as it characterizes worst traits to an extreme.
This brilliant but terrifying novel marks the culmination of the loss of faith in humankind which affected British futuristic fiction in the 1930s and continued to intensify by the Second World War. It provides an insight of worst nightmares on the future state of the world.