Granta added that “Richard Blair, Orwell’s son, has been consulted and approves of the project”. Orwell’s estate said it had been “looking for some time” for an author to tell the story of Smith’s lover, and that Newman, who has previously been longlisted for the Women’s prize and shortlisted for the Guardian first book award, “proved to be the perfect fit”. “But when one day, finding herself walking toward Winston Smith in a long corridor, she impulsively hands him a note – a potentially suicidal gesture – she comes to realise that she’s losing her grip and can no longer safely navigate her world.” She’s an ideal citizen of Oceania,” said Granta. She routinely breaks the rules but also collaborates with the regime whenever necessary. She’s opportunistic, believing in nothing and caring not at all about politics. “She has known no other world and, until she meets Winston, never imagined one. Often she was ready to accept the official mythology, simply because the difference between truth and falsehood did not seem important to her.” But she only questioned the teachings of the Party when they in some way touched upon her own life. As Orwell puts it in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “in some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less susceptible to Party propaganda … She also stirred a sort of envy in him by telling him that during the Two Minutes Hate her great difficulty was to avoid bursting out laughing. Publisher Granta said that Julia understands the world of Oceania “far better than Winston and is essentially happy with her life”. Of course, if you felt foolish calling someone ‘Comrade’, far better not to speak to them at all.” “Comrade Smith was his right name, though ‘Comrade’ never suited him somehow. He was the one Syme called ‘Old Misery’,” writes Newman. “It was the man from Records who began it, him all unknowing in his prim, grim way, his above-it-all oldthink way. In Julia by Sandra Newman, the incidents of Nineteen Eighty-Four are seen through the woman’s eyes. Julia by Sandra Newman Photograph: Granta

Nineteen eighty four by george orwell