1984 isn't just a novel; it's a key to understanding the modern world. George Orwell's final work is a treasure chest of ideas and memes – Big Brother, the Thought Police, Doublethink, Newspeak, 2+2=5 – that gain potency with every year. Particularly in 2016, when the election of Donald Trump made it a bestseller (‘Ministry of Alternative Facts’, anyone?). Its influence has morphed endlessly into novels (The Handmaid's Tale), films (Brazil), television shows (V for Vendetta), rock albums (Diamond Dogs), commercials (Apple), even reality TV (Big Brother).

The Ministry of Truth by Dorian Lynskey is the first book that fully examines the epochal and cultural event that is 1984 in all its aspects: its roots in the utopian and dystopian literature that preceded it; the personal experiences in wartime Britain that Orwell drew on as he struggled to finish his masterpiece in his dying days; and the political and cultural phenomena that the novel ignited at once upon publication and that far from subsiding, have only grown over the decades. It explains how fiction history informs fiction and how fiction explains history.

George Orwell's last novel has become one of the iconic narratives of the modern world. Its ideas have become part of the language - from 'Big Brother' to the 'Thought Police', 'Doublethink', and 'Newspeak' - and seem ever more relevant in the era of 'fake news' and 'alternative facts', while the cultural influence of 1984 ranges from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaids Tale to David Bowie's Diamond Dogs, from the launch of Apple Mac to the reality TV landmark, Big Brother. In this book, Dorian Lynskey investigates Orwell's formative experiences from the Spanish Civil War and war-time London to his book's roots in utopian and dystopian fiction. And he explores the phenomenon that the novel became on publication and the changing ways in which it has been read over the decades since