My favorite book

Well, if you ask me which one is my favorite book that might be a difficult question. However, if I have to choose one, I would say George Orwell’s 1984. It is a story about people in a hypothetical city in early 1984. People are living under an authoritarian regime and most of them are devoted to the Big Brother, who is the political leader of the country. He is constantly present in people’s life through a screen which transmits his speeches repeatedly all day and all night long. At the same time, the screens, which are put in every room and every public place in this country, serve also as cameras that observe and control the population so that they do not plot against the big brother. You can probably understand a little bit better the modern show named Big Brother which has been made in many countries of world. I understand it to be a very popular show, with many seasons, each with different characters willingly accepting to be observed 24/7 with cameras in every corner without any privacy at all. Under the category of reality, these shows seem to provide genuine life on camera. Personally, having read the book first, I could never agree to that. It is a violation of any human dignity and there is no way you can give that up willingly, even if there is a monetary price to it. The book is excellent not only for this, but because it gives a detailed account of how life is manipulated and how history and events are distorted in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. The value increases when you learn that it was written and published shortly after the Second World War. And if you compare it to what actually happened in many dictatorships around the world, the Eastern European Block in particular, you are amazed by the similarities. The book still holds a lot of value for today’s societies and the implications state intervention might have.