Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (1953)

Consult nearby libraries
Buy this book
Sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today his message has become more relevant than ever.
Guy Montag is a firefighter. Their job is to destroy the most illegal merchandise, the printed book, along with the houses in which it is hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions bring, returning each day to his unremarkable life and his wife, Mildred, who spends all day with their television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn't live in fear and a present where one sees the world through the ideas of books instead of the stupid chatter on television. Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.
This sixtieth anniversary edition commemorates Ray Bradbury's masterpiece with a new introduction by Neil Baiman; personal essays on the genesis of the author's novel; a large number of critical essays and reviews by Nelson Algren. Harold Bloom, Margaret Atwood and Others: Rare Manuscript Pages and Sketches from Ray Bradbury's 'Personal Archive and Much More. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.
(back cover)
Consult nearby libraries
Buy this book
Previews available in: English Chinese
Subjects
Mechanical Hound, girl next door, Long Now Manual for Civilization, State Terrorism, Censorship, Novel, Totalitarianism, science fiction, political fiction, satire, Zukunft, state sponsored terrorism, totalitarianism, book burning, censorship, fiction, American science fiction, works of fiction, terrorism, Reading Level-Grade 7, Reading Level-Grade 9, Reading Level-Grade 8, Reading Level-Grade 11, Reading Level-Grade 10, Reading Level-Grade 12, Fiction, dystopian, Fiction, science fiction, general, Fiction, politics, Drama, Large print books, American literature, award: retro_hugo, Terrorism, Totalitarianisms, Bücherverbrennung, State Terrorism, Romans, nouvelles, Totalitarianism, Autodafé de livres, Zhang pian xiao shuo, Education, Language arts, Fiction, horror, Science fiction, American, Book burning--fiction, Censorship--fiction, State Terrorism--fiction, Totalitarianism--fiction, Ps3503.r167 f3 2012, 813/.54People
Guy Montag, Captain Beatty, Clarisse McClellanPlaces
Mei guoTimes
XiandaiShowing 10 featured editions. See all 260 editions?
Book details
Editing notes
Classifications
Collaborators
The physical object
Edition identifiers
Job identifiers
Source records
Job Description
Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. Often considered one of his best works, the novel presents a future American society where books are banned and "firefighters" burn those they find. The book's tagline explains the title as "'the temperature at which the paper of a book catches fire and burns": the self-ignition temperature of the paper. The main character, Guy Montag, is a firefighter who becomes disillusioned with his role of censoring literature and destroying knowledge, and eventually quits his job and commits himself to preserving literary and cultural writings.
The novel has been the subject of interpretations focusing on the historical role of book burnings in suppressing dissident ideas in favor of change. In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury said that he wrote Fahrenheit 451 because of his concerns at the time (during the McCarthy era) about the threat of book burnings in the United States. In later years, he described the book as a commentary on how the media reduces interest in reading literature.
In 1954, Fahrenheit 451 won the Literature Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Commonwealth Club.