Anthem (Heathen Edition)
Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was the pen name of Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, a Russian-American writer and philosopher known for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. The tenets of which are espoused in all of her writings, but especially in her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Born in Russia, and educated during the Russian Revolution, she experienced firsthand the horrors of Communism in action and, yearning to escape, emigrated to the United States in 1926.
In the 30s, as a warning to Western civilization about the horrors of collectivism, she penned Anthem, which was published in England but initially refused publication in America, for reasons the reader will soon discover. It presents a dystopian future in which totalitarian collectivism has triumphed to such an extent that even the word "I" has been forgotten and replaced with "We," and where men are put to death for the crime of discovering and speaking the "unspeakable word" - until one young man, Equality 7-2521, vows to illuminate the Collective darkness and write the first chapter in the new history of man.
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"Anthem is a short novel, but for the young reader it offers exciting action, an appealing love story, and an interesting political philosophy."-Tamara Stadnychenko, English Journal
"A surprising favorite among the high-school taste-makers is Ayn Rand's Anthem . . . it enlarges upon ideas which are expressed in H. G. Well's The Time Machine and implied in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World; it might almost be an extrapolation of George Orwell's 1984 - say, into 2084." -Gerald Raftery, New York Times Book Review
"Tender and terrific - the greatest novel I have ever read, and I have covered the literary waterfront in seven languages. You will think - you will weep - you will be inspired to new determination not to let the creeping evil of collectivism happen here."-Ruth Alexander
"Rand's drive was born of anger; but anger cannot provide a person with a message. The germ of what would be her message can be seen in the passionate human struggles of her early stories; but it is only in Anthem that her message takes on it clear and distinctive form. While the players for her two great later novels are still embryos in this dystopia, Anthem is the overture for the Rand symphony composed of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged." -James T. Baker, Ayn Rand
"Small in length, Anthem is not small in subject. Even in a work designed for magazine publication, Ayn Rand was not capable of writing anything trivial, or of giving her ideas less than her best and fiercest efforts. In relation to The Fountainhead, Anthem is like one of those preliminary sketches that artists draw for their future large canvases." -Shoshana Milgram, Anthem in Manuscript
