Мы (We)

Orwell read We in French, wrote about it in letters in 1944 and reviewed it in Tribune in 1946, while planning his own novel. Nineteen Eighty-Four follows its shape closely:

• A state that watches every citizen, and a Benefactor who is never seen
• A man drawn into rebellion by a love affair
• An ending in which he is cured of his own will

Zamyatin's One State, where citizens are numbers living in glass houses, satirises the regimentation of the early Soviet state.