Sales of Orwell's ‘1984’ Spike

It’s 29 years late, but has Big Brother finally arrived? Readers are flocking to buy George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, which describes a totalitarian surveillance state, since news of the National Security Administration scandal broke. The book has landed on Amazon’s list of “Movers and Shakers,” and sales of the novel have increased thousands of percent. “Throwing out such a broad net of surveillance is exactly the kind of threat Orwell feared,” Orwell biographer Michael Shelden told NPR. President Obama even referenced the novel, naming Big Brother, when he defended the program last Friday.