Anthem (Heathen Edition)

Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was the pen name of Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, a Russian-American writer and philosopher known for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. The tenets of which are espoused in all of her writings, but especially in her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Born in Russia, and educated during the Russian Revolution, she experienced firsthand the horrors of Communism in action and, yearning to escape, emigrated to the United States in 1926.

In the 30s, as a warning to Western civilization about the horrors of collectivism, she penned Anthem, which was published in England but initially refused publication in America, for reasons the reader will soon discover. It presents a dystopian future in which totalitarian collectivism has triumphed to such an extent that even the word “I” has been forgotten and replaced with “We,” and where men are put to death for the crime of discovering and speaking the “unspeakable word,” until one young man, Equality 7-2521, vows to illuminate the Collective darkness and write the first chapter in the new history of man.