Anthem is one of Ayn Rand's earlier works, and it presages the fears of collectivism that characterize Objectivism and her later work, such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. The novel is set in the future and has a universal, timeless feel in its characterization of an ideal character's struggle against a monolithic state. Over the course of this relatively short novella, Rand sets the individual against the collective and concludes that the rational celebration of the self is the only avenue through which technological and societal progress can occur without the suppression of free will.
Rand wrote Anthem in 1937 as a break from her composition of The Fountainhead, and she...
