* An exceptional novel from the winner of the 2000 Booker Prize

Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party.

Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free.

A story that begins with three young people in the garden of a country house on the hottest day of 1935, and ends with three profoundly changed lives. A depiction of love and war, class, childhood and England, that explores shame and forgiveness, atonement and the possibility of absolution.

While reporting from India, a journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness it. In Boston a surgeon awaits the opportunity to perform the nation's first hand transplant, and a woman in Wisonsin wants to give the journalist her husband's hand - but he is still alive.