Anthem (Penguin Modern Classics)

Rand, Ayn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141189614 ISBN 13: 9780141189611

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2008

A powerful dystopian novel from a writer who experienced firsthand the dehumanising conditions of Soviet Russia, Ayn Rand's Anthem includes an introduction by Leonard Peikoff in Penguin Modern Classics.

Equality 7-2521 is a man apart. Since The Great Rebirth it has been a crime in his world to think or act as an individual. Even love is forbidden. Yet since his childhood in the Home of the Infants, Equality 7-2521 has felt that he is different. When he is sent by The Council of Vocations to work as a road sweeper, he stumbles upon a link to the old world that gives him the spur to break free. First published in England in 1938, Ayn Rand's short dystopian novel crystallizes the ideas of individualism and competition that would make her name.

Ayn Rand (1905-82), born Alisa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia, emigrated to America with her family in January 1926, never to return to her native land. Her novel The Fountainhead was published in 1943 and eventually became a bestseller. Still occasionally working as a screenwriter, Rand moved to New York City in 1951 and published Atlas Shrugged in 1957. Her novels espoused what came to be called Objectivism, a philosophy that champions capitalism and the pre-eminence of the individual.

If you enjoyed Anthem, you might also like Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, available in Penguin Classics.

'She created a new credo for all individualists'
The Times Literary Supplement

From the Back Cover:

In this classic novel that anticipates her later masterpieces, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand examines a frightening future in which individuals have no name, no independence, and no values.

Equality 7-2521 lives in the Dark Ages of the future, where all decisions are made by committee, all people live in collectives, all traces of individualism have been wiped out. But the spark of individual thought and freedom still burns in Equality 7-2521, a passion which he has been taught to call sinful. In a purely egalitarian world, he dares to stand forth from the herd -- to think and choose for himself, to discover electricity, and to love the woman of his choice. Now he has been marked for death for committing the ultimate sin: in a world where the great "we" reign supreme, he has rediscovered the lost and holy word "I".

This provocative book is an anthem sung in praise of man's ego.

Synopsis:

Equality 7-2521 is a man apart. Since the Great Rebirth it has been a crime in his world to think or act as an individual. Even love is forbidden. Yet, since his childhood in the Home of the Infants, Equality 7-2521 has felt that he is different. When he is sent by the Council of Vocations to work as a road sweeper, he stumbles upon a link to the old world that gives him the spur to break free. First published in England in 1938, Ayn Rand's short dystopian novel crystalises the ideas of individualism and competition that would make her name.