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 Great Britain, a province of the superstate Oceania. Oceania is a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation. Oceania's residents are dictated by a political regime euphemistically named English Socialism (shortened to "Ingsoc" in Newspeak, the government's invented language). The superstate is under the control of the privileged, elite Inner Party.