George Orwell

Dear George Orwell,

Your “1984” is at the top of my favorite books list. I didn’t study it back in school like most of my friends, I happened to come across it when I was searching for powerful, influential books. I bought it but I didn’t actually read it till later.

I was in a time when I would’ve done anything to escape my reality and fall in to the curves of a book. And your book have done just that.

Your book grabbed me and pushed me in to a world that years and years ago was only supposed to be an imaginary world. An imaginary world that’s colliding with reality in so many ways.

I read it in a span of two nights and then right after I finished it, I found the audiobook and listened to it for 6 hours straight.

The best books are those that tell you what you know already.

I fell in your fairytale land like Alice fell in the rabbit hole.

I fell in love with the characters as if they were my dear friends.

I loved the words and the simple language.

You made up your words as you went ahead.

You had style, man.

Pretty early in the book you said the end is contained in the beginning and those words were simply what I needed to know.

You got me reflecting on my whole life and the politics in many countries. You only dreamed of it all as a fantasy or a non-reality. But I beg to differ.

Many incidents have I come to recognize them as my own. The fear of falling in love or the fear of rebellion or the fear of thinking criminal thoughts.

Destroying and recreating the language it got me to think, what if they destroyed the word rebellion, the word defy, the word disagreement? Then there won’t be any!

The thought police, destroying news and remaking history, the curfew, the continuous watch over people’s lives, the mind control through food, the imprisonment.

Your book got me scared, if only 20% of that dystopia is happening somewhere in the world right now, what if 100% of your prophecy came true!

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever. 

Your book was thought-provocative, you got us thinking when we didn’t even want to think. Your book was unputdownable. It is the love of my life.

I wish you could really see my letter and understand how much your writing influenced me but we shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.

Thank you for your beautiful legacy.

May you rest in peace.

Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), who used the pen name George Orwell, was a British novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism.

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Passant A. AbdelAal is an Egyptian with a severe addiction for reading novels and a passion for poetry, who writes bits and pieces of poetry and musings.

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