Anthem

About this book

In a dark future, after a disaster called the Unmentionable Times, people live in a collective society where the word 'I' has been forgotten; everyone speaks of himself as 'we', and the state chooses each person's work, home and companions. Equality 7-2521, assigned to be a street sweeper, secretly loves learning, and in an old tunnel he discovers, alone, how to make electric light. When the Council of Scholars condemns his discovery as a sin, he flees into the Uncharted Forest with a young woman he calls the Golden One, and there he finds the forbidden word.

Context and significance

Ayn Rand (1905–1982), who left the Soviet Union in 1926, wrote the short novel in 1937, and it was first published in England in 1938. It is a fable of individualism against collectivism, and it reads quickly. It shares much with Yevgeny Zamyatin's earlier We.

About the author