Nineteen Eighty-Four (also titled 1984), by George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair), is an English dystopian novel about life in a dictatorship as lived by Winston Smith, an intellectual worker at the Ministry of Truth, and his degradation when he runs afoul of the totalitarian government of Oceania, the state in which he lives in the year 1984.

Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in 1949 and has been translated to sixty-two languages. The novel's title, its terms and its language (Newspeak), and its author's surname are bywords for personal privacy lost to national state security. The adjective "Orwellian" denotes totalitarian action and organisation; the phrase: Big Brother is Watching You connotes pervasive, invasive surveillance. Also the following quote became famous: War is Peace Freedom is Slavery Ignorance is Strength

Although the novel has been banned or challenged in some countries, it, along with Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, and Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, is among literature's most famous dystopias. In 2005, Time magazine listed it among the best one hundred English-language novels published since 1923.