Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final completed book. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a democratic socialist and an anti-Stalinist, modelled an authoritarian socialist Britain on the Soviet Union in the era of Stalinism and the practices of censorship and propaganda in Nazi Germany. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated.