Hailed by The New York Times as "a compelling dystopian look at paranoia from one of the most unique and perceptive writers of our time, " this brief, captivating novel offers a cautionary tale. The story unfolds within a society in which all traces of individualism have been eliminated from every aspect of life -- use of the word "I" is a capital offense. The hero, a rebel who discovers that man's greatest moral duty is the pursuit of his own happiness, embodies the values the author embraced in her personal philosophy of objectivism: reason, ethics, volition, and individualism.