1984

Published in 1948, this cautionary tale follows a lone protagonist who struggles under the rule of a repressive totalitarian government. Set in a future version of England, called Airstrip One, the novel is famous for its imagined language that conjures a cruelly cynical authoritarian regime. One of the most popular novels in the English language, it is part political thriller and part science fiction, and it established the word Orwellian to describe official deception, unwarranted surveillance, and revisionist history by the state.