Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Nós

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Nós by Yevgeny Zamyatin

8 reviews

ziggyreadz's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

We was really excellent. Although I was tired of the plot by this point (I know that it was the blueprint for dystopian sci fi, so it was revolutionary at the time — that didn’t erase all of the bad, formulaic dystopian books I have read), the writing was incredible and fast paced enough to keep you interested.

The writing style was far and away my favorite part of this book. It is surreal and metaphorical to the point of sometimes being obscure, though not flowery. It is entirely based in logic and mathematics, which I feel Zamyatin fully dedicated himself to in this work. It is a thorough aesthetic exploration of a man yearning to be a machine (and failing).

Without spoiling too much, I thought the plot was decently subversive — despite the now familiar beats, I was still on the edge of my seat.

I really enjoyed the fact that D-503 remained an ambiguous character until the end. Most current (American) dystopian novels have the protagonist ideologically convert to being anti-establishment, but D-503 is torn apart by the split between his ideas (allegiance to the One State) and his feelings (I-330). I think this makes the more compelling argument that totalitarianism doesn’t work because you cannot eradicate the basic human need to express emotion and desire to have freedoms, as opposed to convincing the protagonist that it is subjectively/morally wrong.

One other thing I will mention is that there is a black character, R-13, and he is described in a very racist way. Every time he popped up in the book I was cringing.

Content Warnings

mousecat's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

saraaaa's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark reflective sad tense fast-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

It's a great book. One of the first of its kind. This novel was written between 1919 and 1921. Huxley claimed to have not read it before the publication of Brave New World; George Orwell, on the other hand, read it and thoroughly enjoyed it, so it's safe to say it might have been of inspiration for 1984.
Although this reads more similar to Animal Farm, with its bitter irony, facing the readers with the cold hard truth of the situation and letting them come to a conclusion fn their own. A fine piece of literature, in this sense.
It's full of mathematical and even biblical references, but nothing too hard for the common reader, and offers some brilliant, very modern philosophical and sociological considerations – truly a book that makes you think.
There were some racist descriptions and misogynistic observations that made me physically wince – were the prejudices really so engraved in Zamjatin's head that he couldn't imagine they would have not persisted in a culture 900 years into the future?
Apart from this, it was almost funny to note how technologically "backwards" (though I hate this term) such a culture was if compared to ours, just a century after the novel was written. Really puts into perspective how much has been discovered and invented in so little time, and how unexpected this development must've been.
But back to the book. I'd say by the end of story, it gets almost unbearably slow – otherwise it's a very quick read –, but I guess I have to take into account that this was a reread for me. Still, I highly recommend it – has to be read at least once in a lifetime.

Content Warnings