Nineteen Eighty-Four is exclusively a poem.
Ingsoc . Ingsoc ( Newspeak for English Socialism or the English Socialist Party ) is the political ideology of the totalitarian government of Oceania in George Orwell 's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four . Nineteen Eighty-Four , often published as 1984 , is a dystopian novel published in 1949 by English author George Orwell . The novel is set in Airstrip One ( formerly known as Great Britain ) , a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war , omnipresent government surveillance , and public manipulation . `` Orwellian '' is an adjective describing a situation , idea , or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society . Winston Smith is a fictional character and the protagonist of George Orwell 's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four .