ANTHEM

This is an amazing story, but hobbled by a terrible printing. The production quality of this publication is so bad that I'm returning it.First and foremost, this story is a fantastic tale about a man struggling with his individuality in a dystopian communist society. It should be required reading for everyone, as to the dangers of group thinking and how it can inhibit innovation and creativity. I won't give too much away, but the unusual writing style captures the reader at the very first paragraph and takes them on an immersive journey.Having said that, this is a terrible publication. The production quality is terrible. The color cover is low-resolution and full of JPG compression artifacts. While that doesn't detract from the story, it's a sign of the amateur design that extends to the text. The real problem is inside. The margins are huge. That may be useful for some readers who want room to annotate, but the person doing the layout went with an absurdly small typeface. I measured it: its 7 points high. By comparison, most books are 10-12pt. Some books may go down to 9pt but 7pts is just ridiculous. The book is quite thin at 42 pages of 6x9 inch paper, so I can't find a compelling reason to make the point size so small. Given that the story is a quick read with short chapters, the publisher could have gone up to 10pt type and reduced the margins to something reasonable and not added any pages to it. It's completely unnecessary and renders the publication unreadable to many readers.

In this dystopian society, one man stands alone. He believes in a better world. One where it is not a crime to love a woman. One where stating your idea is not a death sentence. In the dark world he lives in he is looking for a way to make it light again. The short novella, Anthem by Ayn Rand was published in 1938. Ayn submitted it two an American and an English publishing firm, but in the end the publishing firm Cassell located in England published the book. This book contains 52 pages. This book follows the life of Equality 7-2521 as he tries to survive in the dystopian society he was born into. Equality 7-2521 is the main character of the book. He has two friends, Union 5-3992 and International 4-8818. They found an entrance to an old tunnel in their assigned work area. Equality 7-2521 is a street sweeper. He is a very intelligent man, however he learned things too quickly and asked too many questions. As a result, the Council of Vocations assigned him the job of street cleaner as a punishment for his intelligence. With this newly discovered tunnel, he started preforming scientific experiments. He stole some paper and started writing his findings in a journal. While cleaning the streets Equality 7-2521 meets a woman with the name, Liberty 5-3000. The two discover that they love each other, however in their society you do not love each other, man and woman cannot even talk to each other. In his experiments Equality 7-2521 rediscovers electricity. He decides to take his finding to the World Council of Scholars, in the hope they will be impressed and amazed by his discovery. However, this is not the case. They sentence him to death. Before they could catch him, he runs into the Uncharted Forest, where he is joined by Liberty 5-3000. They live their lives together in the forest and discover what they can about life before their dystopian society. Throughout most of the people refer to themselves as “we” instead of “I.” In this society they removed the words “I,” and “You.” They believed that individuality was a sign of ego. The fact that the society, thought referring to yourself with “I” would get rid of a person’s individuality is absurd. A person’ individuality comes from the way a person acts. For example in the book, Equality 7-2521 expressed his individuality through his scientific experiments. Yes, he could not state that he, himself accomplished his experiments. But he still did it himself. It was not a group of people doing these experiments. Therefore, he was still expressing his individuality. The society did not successfully take away a person’s individuality, just by removing the words, “I” and “You.” Equality 7-2521 still found a way to express himself in his own way. This book was an enjoyable read. I liked the dystopian society. I would recommend this book to young adults. I liked that this dystopian society took a way the words “I” and “You.” While they thought that this would take away a person’s individuality it did not. I liked that the viewpoints switched from First Person to Third Person throughout the story. It provided a unique perspective. Also, I liked that the focused of the story stayed on Equality 7-2521. Yes, he feel in love with a woman, but it did not become a love story. The book stayed focused on the dystopian society and the issues that Equality 7-2521 found wrong in the society.

I feel like an idiot. I made it halfway through this book before realizing that what I thought was stylistically strange diction was in fact just someone's butchery of a translation. I thought Rand's apparent thesaurus abuse, her use of a denotatively similar word in place of the correct one, was another jab at collectivism and a stylistic illustration about the importance of individual identity. It's not. Her actual prose is much less opaque. Here's one of her paragraphs: "And there it was that we saw Liberty 5-3000 walking along the furrows. Their body was straight and thin as a blade of iron. Their eyes were dark and hard and glowing, with no fear in them, no kindness and no guilt. Their hair was golden as the sun; their hair flew in the wind, shining and wild, as if it defied men to restrain it. They threw seeds from their hand as if they deigned to fling a scornful gift, arid the earth was as a beggar under their feet."The kindle version here writes: "And there it turned into that we saw Liberty five-3000 taking walks alongside the furrows. Their body changed into instantly and thin as a blade of iron. Their eyes have been darkish and difficult and sparkling, with no fear in them, no kindness and no guilt. Their hair changed into golden as the solar; their hair flew in the wind, shining and wild, as though it defied guys to restrain it. They threw seeds from their hand as though they deigned to fling a scornful present, and the earth become a beggar under their toes."Having never read Rand before, and having never seen Amazon sell a book so wildly inaccurate, I made it halfway through before downloading another version to check. This one isn't what you want. Pay the $8 for a real copy.