George Orwell’s ‘1984’ And Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ Spike In Sales Following NSA Scandal

1984, George Orwell's classic dystopian novel, as well as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World have seen a huge spike in sales following last week's NSA scandal. A whistleblower revealed that the U.S. government monitors phone calls and Internet use to track down possible terrorists, VOA News reports.

Today.com reports that the centennial edition of 1984 ranked number 4 on Amazon's "Movers and Shakers List" as of Tuesday afternoon. Book sales increased by more than 6000 percent within the last 24 hours, jumping to the 123rd spot on book sales overall.

The book, originally published in 1948, tells the story of a rebellious effort against totalitarianism and was meant to serve as a futuristic look into a government with overreaching powers, according to Today.com. It is theorized by many media sources that perhaps readers are scrambling to read the classic dystopian novels following the discovery of the surveillance efforts on U.S. citizens by the government.

Many politicians have referred to 1984 in the wake of the NSA surveillance scandal, including President Barack Obama and Senator Bernie Sanders.

"In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a potential program run amok, but when you actually look at the details, then I think we've struck the right balance," the president said, referring to totalitarian dictator "Big Brother" in 1984.

Brave New World, another futuristic novel, was reported out of stock online. The book describes a world in which individuality is crushed by an omnipresent government, according to VOA News.

This is not the first time politics have driven book sales. NPR reports that in 2008, sales of Ayn Rand's conservative classic Atlas Shrugged spiked during the banking industry bailouts.

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