We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

Crikey, this is a real discovery. I came across this novel almost by accident, but I quickly realised that the dystopian vision was very familiar, and that it is a hugely influential work. The enclosed, mechanised, emotionally repressed setting surely makes We an ur-text for Metropolis, Brave New World, 1984, Logan’s Run, THX-1138, even the classic role-playing game Paranoia.

As a novel, it is not so successful. It is in the first person, so Zamyatin is restricted by a narrator who tries to be coldly rational at all times and is ill-equipped to respond when he begins to feel love. It was a clunky translation that I had too, I think. However, it is clearly a lesser-known work of great importance and, as such, I’m glad to have read it.