1985

January 3, 1985. The announcement comes over the tele-
screen: Big Brother is dead. His empire, Oceania, has been
defeated in a disastrous air battle and is no more. Only two
great powers remain: Eurasia and Eastasia. Behind the scenes
Big Sister (Big Brother s widow) struggles with the Thought
Police and the army for power, while elsewhere the winds of
reform sweep through the remnants of Oceania.
Everywhere, under the bitingly humorous hand of Gy6rgy
Dalos, George Orwell s chilling world of 1984 seems to be experi-
encing a thaw, as Orwell s tortured lovers Smith and Julia,
O Brien the Thought Policeman, Ampleforth the hack poet,
and Syme the cynical philologist come alive again. However,
when the thaw becomes a revolution as the proles get involved,
the now-friendly neighboring empire Eurasia steps in to ~restore
orded
If this scenario reminds you of anything, that s no surprise.
Gyorgy Dalos is a child of post-Stalinist Hungary, and no one
could have been better placed to write such an incredibly in-
genious successor to Orwelrs prophetic novel of the cold war,
a hilarious international roman E clef f~ for today s world.
Gy6rgy Dalos, born in Hungary in 1943, studied at Moscow
University from 1962 to 1967. He was put on trial in his own
country in 1968 for "Maoist" activity, expelled from the
Hungarian Communist Party, dismissed from work, and put
under police surveillance. He makes his living as a translator and
also has published a collection of his poems. Just as Orwell s orig-
inal 1984 could not be published in Hungary, so this book could
not. It has come out, however, in German, French, and EngEsh
editions.