Nineteen Eighty-Four as Comfort Read: What That Actually Says

Every time the political temperature rises by a few degrees, Nineteen Eighty-Four climbs the charts. This has happened seven times in the last decade. The readership is not discovering the book; they are returning to it for something specific.

The book's function is not warning. Readers who already know about surveillance states do not need Orwell to explain the concept. What they are using it for is recognition: the particular texture of a world where official language has detached from observable reality. The novel maps that texture precisely.