Book of a lifetime: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

From The Independent archive: Christopher Fowler on ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ by George Orwell

Clarity of thought and language gave Orwell’s writing its power (Getty)

Growing up in Sixties suburban London was rather like lying in tepid bathwater for several years. Into this sleepy complacency fell Nineteen Eighty-Four, a book that entrapped me for life. I was on the cusp of adolescence, reading voraciously, gradually testing the limits of my smug world, and bought it in the Popular Book Centre Greenwich, a seedy secondhand shop with a nice line in top-shelf smut. As we were still 15 years away from the novel’s date, I naively assumed it would provide futuristic rocket adventures.

Heinemann printed it as part of the Modern Novel Series, a catch-all collection that included LP Hartley and Somerset Maugham. The blank green-and-white cover hid any indication of the content. I skipped the deadening introduction by Stephen Spender and arrived at the first line. “It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.”