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The narrator, D-503, is a mathematician and the chief builder of the Integral, a spaceship that will carry the One State's ideas to other worlds. He keeps a diary meant to celebrate his society's perfection. Then he meets I-330, a bold, provocative woman who smokes, drinks forbidden liquor and seems to delight in breaking the rules. Through her he discovers feelings he cannot measure and a secret world beyond the Green Wall.

Zamyatin wrote the novel in Russia in 1920 and 1921, and it was banned there for more than sixty years. Its style is unusual: fragmented, full of mathematical images and sudden bursts of emotion, as D-503's tidy mind begins to crack. It is often called the first great modern dystopia, and George Orwell reviewed it before writing 1984. Clarence Brown's translation captures its energy, though the prose takes some getting used to.

Short but demanding, and endlessly rewarding for anyone curious about where dystopian fiction began. Read it alongside 1984 and Brave New World to see how much they share. About 256 pages in the Penguin Classics paperback.