1938

105

United States

Written with all the power and conviction that made THE FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED classics of American letters, Ayn Rand's ANTHEM is a hymn to man's independent spirit and to the highest word in the human language -- the word "Ego." ANTHEM tells the story of a man who rediscovers individualism and his own "I" It is a world of absolute collectivization, a world where sightless, joyless, selfless men exist for the sake of serving the State; where their work, their food, and their mating are prescribed to them by order of the Collective's rulers in the name of society's welfare. It is a world which lost all the achievements of science and civilization when it lost its root, the independent mind, and reverted to primitive savagery a world where language contains no singular pronouns, where the "We" has replaced the "I," and where men are put to death for the crime of discovering and speaking the "unspeakable word." ANTHEM presents not merely a frightening projection of existing trends, but, more importantly, a positive answer to those trends and a weapon against them, a key to the world's moral crisis and to a new morality of individualism -- a morality that, if accepted today, will save us from a future such as the one presented in this story.