Publisher orders 75,000 reprints of ‘1984’

NEW YORK — With “alternative facts” the latest catchphrase, George Orwell’s “1984” is No. 1 on Amazon. com and t he publisher has ordered an additional 75,000 copies.

Signet Classics told The Associated Press in a statement Wednesday that sales have been “remarkably robust” for a book that already is a classroom standard.

The publisher noted that books such as Orwell’s tap into “the fears, anxieties, and even hopes” of readers.

The heightened interest in Orwell’s Dystopian classic, in which lan- guage itself is held captive, follows assertions by President Donald Trump and some White House aides about the size of his inaugural crowd and whether voter fraud led him to lose the popular vote to Hillary Clinton last fall.

Administration adviser Kellyanne Conway has called such assertions “alternate facts.”

Orwell set his story in the fictional Oceania, one of three mega-states fighting in 1984. Oceania is a police state that monitors all of its inhabitants activities.