In the days since President Donald Trump took office, sales of George Orwell’s “1984” have skyrocketed by more than 9,500 percent, according to a spokesman for Signet Classics, which publishes the book.
The classic dystopian novel also topped Amazon’s bestseller list Wednesday morning.
The book began to appear in the bestseller list, which is updated hourly, earlier this week after White House spokesman Sean Spicer made several false statements that were then described by Trump’s adviser, Kellyanne Conway, as “alternative facts.”
Some commentators denounced her expression as “Orwellian.”
Orwell’s novel, published in 1949, paints a bleak picture of a devious “Big Brother” government that spies on its citizens and forces them into “double-think,” or simultaneously accepting contradictory versions of the truth.
This week alone, Signet Classics ordered an additional 75,000 reprints of the novel to keep up with demand, the spokesman said.
The last time “1984” made Amazon’s bestseller list was in 2013 after Edward Snowden leaked classified information on the National Security Agency’s surveillance program, CNN reported.
-With Reuters
