Anthem
(Ayn Rand)

Ayn Rand was born in 1905 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The time she spent in Russia during her childhood was one of the most tumultuous times in the country’s history. When she was twelve, the Bolshevik Revolution occurred and the Communist Era was ushered into existence. Rand’s family fell into extreme poverty along with most of the country, and they lost their business.

Rand completed high school outside of the country to avoid the Civil War and returned only to attend college. In 1926, she moved to Chicago so she would not have to live under the reign of Joseph Stalin. Shortly after, she moved to Hollywood to pursue a career as a screenwriter, was married, and began to write fiction. Her first novel, “We the Living” was published in 1936. Her most well-known novels are “The Fountainhead” (1943) and “Atlas Shrugged” (1957).

“Anthem” was published in the United States in 1946, nine years after its publication in Great Britain. This novel serves as a political manifesto for Rand and is quite popular in the realm of dystopian literature, joined by George Orwell’s “1984” and Lois Lowry’s “The Giver”, amongst others. “Anthem” is Rand’s idea of what would happen to a society if it embraced collectivism and mirrors the reign of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. Rand rejects the idea of group conformity and organized religion and instead embraces the idea of self-determination. Rand continued to attract the attention of philosophers and to lecture on objectivism until her death in 1982.