We by Yevgeny Zamyatin [FIRST U.S. PAPERBACK EDITION] 1972 • Bantam

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

FIRST U.S. PAPERBACK EDITION [1972] BANTAM

Ex-library copy with stamps on text block and title page and discolored underside of cover.  Makes for a pretty excellent reading copy; binding is tight and pages appear unread.

Before Brave New World...
Before 1984... There was...   WE.

In the One State of the great Benefactor, there are no individuals, only numbers. Life is an ongoing process of mathematical precision, a perfectly balanced equation. Primitive passions and instincts have been subdued. Even nature has been defeated, banished behind the Green Wall. But one frontier remains: outer space. Now, with the creation of the spaceship Integral, that frontier—will be subjugated to the beneficent yoke of reason.

One number, D-503, chief architect of the Integral, decides to record his thoughts in the final days before the launch for the benefit of less advanced societies. But a chance meeting with the beautiful I-330 results in an unexpected discovery that threatens everything D-503 believes about himself and the One State. The discovery—or rediscovery— of inner space... and that disease the ancients called the soul.

A page-turning SF adventure, a masterpiece of wit and black humor that accurately predicted the horrors of Stalinism, WE is a classic dystopian novel. Its message of hope and warning is as timely at the end of the twentieth century as it was at the beginning.