Internationally acclaimed, with more than five million copies in circulation, Ray Bradbury's classic novel "Fahrenheit 451" is a story about censorship and the people who defy it - a book as relevant today as it was when it was first published about sixty years ago.

"The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books had to be burned, along with the houses where they were hidden."

Guy Montag was a fireman and his job was to start fires. He enjoyed starting fires. For ten years he had done this job and was never troubled by the pleasure he felt during the night raids or the joy he experienced when he saw the pages surrender to the flames... Nothing troubled him until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who spoke to him about the past, about a time when people were not afraid. And then he met a professor who spoke to him about the future, about the days when people would be able to think. Suddenly, Guy Montag realized what he had to do...

Bradbury's robust and poetic prose and his unusual insight into the possibilities of technology combine to create a prophetic narrative about the subjugation of Western civilization to the media, drugs, and conformity - a narrative comparable to Orwell's "1984" and Huxley's "Brave New World."

"A story that unsettles the reader as it explores what happens when ignorance - in its most extreme form - is considered a virtue."

("The Times")