From Library Journal
Rand's dark portrait of the future was first released in England in 1938 and reedited for publication in the United States in 1946. This 50th-anniversary edition includes a scholarly introduction and a facsimile of the original British version, which bears Rand's handwritten alterations for its American debut.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Ayn Rand's Anthem is a short dystopic novel about a man who escapes a society from which all individuality has been squeezed. Its allegory is crudely transparent, and the ideas have lost their political urgency. (The book was published in 1938, a decade before Orwell's 1984.) But Anthem provides a good introduction to Rand's philosophy of "objectivism," which is built on individuality, freedom, and reason. Paul Meier is an excellent choice for the novel's first-person narrator--he manages to maintain an urgency in his voice, pleading but never whining, mirroring the main character's struggle against his totalitarian world. D.B. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


Joan DeArmond, Fact Forum News, Dallas
In her usage of the English language she combines clarity of expression with prose of poetic grace. Here, indeed, is an anthem-an anthem, not in the idiom of music, but in the more difficult medium of words alone. This is the most beautiful, the most inspiring novel this reviewer has ever read. It is an ethical and philosophical rather than a religious dedication to freedom and the individual.


All-American Books, New Rochelle, NY
Reading this inspired little story is a rewarding and satisfying experience which no American should deny himself.

ANNOTATION

This expanded edition of Ayn Rand's classic tale of a future dark age of the great "We"--in which individuals have no name, no independence, and no values--is a beautifully written, powerful novel that projects current social trends into the future, and anticipates such later Rand masterpieces as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Equality 7-2521 lives in the Dark Ages of the future, when all decisions are made by committee, all people live in collectives, all traces of individualism have been wiped out. But the spark of individual thought and freedom still burns in Equality 7-2521's breast, though he doesn't know what to call his passion to think and choose for himself, other than sinful. In a world where he is punished for being better than his brothers, he finds a tunnel from ancient times where he can be by himself to write and think. He discovers electricity - and the miracle of the love that a man can have for a woman. Equality 7-2521 comes close to losing his life for this because his knowledge was regarded as a treacherous blasphemy. In a world where the crowd is one - a great WE, he has rediscovered the lost and holy word - I.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

The difference between this long-forgotten exercise in paranoia and other futuristic visions of a world controlled by the state, such as Aldous Huxley's or George Orwell's, is the extremist tone of Rand's story. The author lived in a black-and-white world in which things social or communal are evil and things individual and selfish are exalted. This "anthem" culminates in a hymn to the concepts of "I" and "ego," where the rebels are those who resist group action; the oppressors are government officials and others who attempt to provide a safety net for the less fortunate. The production is not improved by the theatricality of narrator Paul Meier, which is reminiscent of a ham Victorian actor intoning an overwrought melodrama. Not recommended.-Mark Pumphrey, Polk Cty. P.L., Columbus, NC

AudioFile