Title: Alone (Seul)
Author: Yevgeny Zamyatin
Genre: Short Story
Themes: Isolation, Consciousness, Revolution
Publication Date: 1908
Alone (Seul) is Yevgeny Zamyatin’s first published short story, written in 1907 while he was still a naval engineering student. This modernist work depicts the tormented consciousness of a young revolutionary imprisoned in solitary confinement.
As the protagonist endures extreme isolation, his perception of reality begins to blur, transforming his prison cell into a surreal and hallucinatory space. The story is an early psychological exploration of the effects of oppression and loneliness, foreshadowing the themes Zamyatin would later develop in his dystopian masterpiece We.