Big Brother is Watching
Livraria Lello Porto presents an immersive experience inspired by George Orwell's 1984, created in collaboration with internationally renowned artist Mike Perry. Located in the Bookshop's new wing, the 1984 Wicket transforms the act of purchasing a book into a thought-provoking encounter with one of the most influential novels of all time.
Visit
Some books are too important to be read alone.
Visitors are invited to share the book with someone else, extending the conversation beyond the walls of the bookshop through specially designed postboxes created for this purpose.
Every interaction becomes part of the experience. Every visitor becomes part of the record.
Mike Perry
Internationally renowned for his vibrant graphic language, bold use of colour and unmistakable visual imagination, Mike Perry’s work moves seamlessly between illustration, design, animation and contemporary art. His creations have been exhibited around the world and featured in projects spanning publishing, television, fashion and culture.
The Dystopian Vision
For Livraria Lello Porto, Perry reimagines dystopia not through darkness, but through contradiction. His visual universe is playful yet unsettling, optimistic yet disquieting, filled with hidden symbols, distorted messages and graphic systems that reward closer observation.
The 1984 Wicket extends this vision beyond the page, transforming the book’s graphic language into an immersive physical experience. As visitors move through the installation, they enter the world Perry created for Orwell’s masterpiece—a world where surveillance hides behind entertainment, propaganda disguises itself as design, and every interaction becomes part of the story.
"Working on this project made me think less about politics and more about humanity. About the fragile act of speaking your mind before fear convinces you not to. About the right to remain contradictory, emotional, vulnerable, and fully human."
Few novels have shaped the way we understand the modern world as profoundly as 1984. Published in 1949, George Orwell’s masterpiece gave us a language to describe power itself. Concepts such as Big Brother, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, doublethink, and the manipulation of truth have long since escaped the pages of the novel to become part of our collective vocabulary.
This is, perhaps, Orwell’s greatest achievement.
More than seventy-five years after its publication, we continue to turn to the ideas he created to make sense of the world around us.
Language
Few books have entered the public consciousness so completely. When surveillance expands, we speak of Big Brother. When facts are contested, we invoke doublethink. When language is simplified, manipulated or turned into a weapon, we return to Newspeak.
Orwell’s most enduring warning was, above all, about language. In 1984, the State develops Newspeak: a language designed to reduce the number of words available, making certain ideas increasingly difficult to express and, ultimately, impossible to think. As Orwell wrote, “The purpose of Newspeak was to narrow the range of thought.” Few ideas feel more relevant today.
"The purpose of Newspeak was to narrow the range of thought."
Growing Polarisation
We live in an age of relentless communication, yet public discourse is becoming increasingly polarised. Language is constantly simplified, repurposed and contested. Complex ideas are reduced to slogans. Nuance gives way to certainty. The space for disagreement grows ever narrower. Perhaps that is why readers continue to return to 1984.
2+2=5
In January 2017, sixty-eight years after its publication, the novel became the best-selling book on Amazon in the United States. Similar surges in sales have occurred repeatedly around the world whenever societies experience periods of political tension, censorship or growing concerns over freedom of expression.
An Essential Read
Each generation approaches 1984 as a warning about the future, only to discover that it is reading a book about the present. At Livraria Lello Porto, we believe that books are among humanity’s most powerful tools for preserving language, complexity and independent thought. That is why 1984 remains an essential work.
