Orwell’s 1984 Gets a Trigger Warning

By Cam Wakefield

George Orwell’s 1984, the literary equivalent of a klaxon screaming “WARNING: TOTALITARIANISM AHEAD!”, has now been fitted with… a warning. A preface, to be precise, from the hand of one Dolen Perkins-Valdez, who informs readers that the book’s protagonist, Winston Smith, holds views about women that are “despicable.”

Apparently, the fictional character in a novel about mind control, censorship, and the slow boiling of individual thought in the stew of state propaganda has now committed the gravest sin of all: he failed to pass a 2025 HR sensitivity seminar.

This is the 75th-anniversary edition of 1984. That’s three-quarters of a century of warning bells, wake-up calls, and high-school essays on why Big Brother is bad. And now we’re being told by the publisher, Berkley Books, that the book needs a moral escort to make sure no one gets the wrong idea.