Additional information
by Boualem Sansal (Author), Alison Anderson (Translator)
"Noir fiction à la Orwell." Le Monde
In the kingdom of Abistan, citizens submit to a single god, demonstrating their devotion by kneeling in prayer nine times a day, denouncing dissenters, and demonstrating blind faith in a just god. Secular learning has been banned, remembering is forbidden, and an omnipresent surveillance system informs the authorities of every deviant act, thought, or idea.
Ati has encountered certain people, however, wanderers and outcasts, who think differently. In ghettos and caves, hidden from the authorities and the ubiquitous surveillance, exist the last living freethinkers of Abistan. Under their influence, Ati begins to doubt, and ultimately undertakes a perilous journey into Abistan's hidden territories in an effort to resist submission and discover the true origin of the Holy Book.
A tribute to George Orwell's 1984, a work of political satire, and a novel of protest against totalitarianism of all kinds, Sansal's 2084 tells the story of one man's struggle for freedom in a near future in which independent thought has been outlawed.
"A powerful satire...Sansal spares us nothing of the horrors of the autocratic state, its hypocrisy, its deceptions and malicious contrivances." The Spectator
"Always intriguing...Sansal's playfulness is his most endearing writerly quality." The National
Author Biography
Boualem Sansal is the Arab world's most courageous and controversial novelist. His first novel to appear in English (The German Mujahid, Europa 2009) was the first work of fiction by an Arab writer to acknowledge the Holocaust in print. He started writing novels at the age of fifty, shortly after retiring as a high-ranking official in the Algerian government. He was awarded the prestigious Prix du Roman Arabe in 2012, and the German Peace Prize in 2011.
