'1984' Book Sales: George Orwell's Popular Science Fiction Novel Sees Sales Spike Amidst NSA Headlines

Earlier this week we reported that Shia LaBeouf's 2008 comments on the government prying into our privacy were ahead of their time. One author, George Orwell, made some fairly accurate predictions 64 years ago, and book buyers are buying his famous novel "1984" in droves, potentially due to headlines regarding the National Security Administration and its PRISM project. 

Three different printed versions of "1984" saw significant boosts in sales during the last week. Amazon's "Movers & Shakers" page, which tracks products with the biggest surges in popularity, indicated the jumps. The Centennial Edition of the famous novel saw a 4000 percent rise in sales (meaning the novel is selling 400 times as many copies this week as it did last week). 

"1984" was written by Orwell in 1949, describing a dystopian future where all activity is overseen by a mysterious figure named Big Brother. The book has long served as the go-to reference for arguments against government surveillance, with "big brother" and "Orwellian" becoming popular pop-culture terms to describe authoritarian presence. The concept has become popular in the last week after it was revealed that the NSA was potentially looking into the e-mail and phone records of American citizens. 

The news hasn't just inspired interest in "1984" for Orwell either; "Animal Farm," another dystopian staple published in 1945, saw a 250 percent jump in sales at Amazon. 

There are some alternate theories for the sudden interest in "1984" however. The Washington Examiner suggested that the book's recent success could be due to the release of its "60th Anniversary Edition." But...that book was released on June 6, 2009. Not 2013. So we're going to stick with the NSA theory.