Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell  The clocks were striking
13 as Winston Smith entered his seventh-floor flat in Victory
Mansions. The voice on the telescreen babbled away about the
overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan as he gazed out of
the window at the bleak landscape dominated by posters of a
black-moustached face, with the caption "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING
YOU". This was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself a
province of Oceania.  He sat down in the alcove, hidden from the
Thought Police. He picked up the book he had bought from a
slummy shop that Party members were not supposed to frequent and
felt a tremor pass through his bowels. The thing that he was
about to start was a diary, an offence punishable by death or at
least by 25 years of forced labour.  I am a real 39-year-old man
with real feelings. I am not just a cog in a heavy-handed
political satire on Soviet totalitarianism.  Winston stopped
writing. What's the point? he thought. I am just a cipher. He
drank a tumbler of Victory G