George Orwell's novel 1984 is a classic and chilling dystopian work that opens with a statement meant to seem out of the ordinary: "It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." With this startling opening line, Orwell subtly alerts the reader that statements of truth in this fictional society should be constantly called into question. The novel is set in an imagined totalitarian future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and relentless propaganda.
