Did you read it in English? It has an invented language, so it is very complicated to read, even in English.
You nailed it... I read a translation, and even if the translator made a serious effort -- and apparently a good job, I really should have went straight to the original.
The "problem" I have with this book is three-fold:
1) I loved the cinema adaptation -- I am a huge Malcolm Mcdowell fan;
2) Somehow I connected the book to the great dystopia tradition -- 1984, Brave New World and
We (*);
3) I am an avid consumer of classic science fiction (Asimov, Lem, Bradbury, Dick, Clarke...) and that sets an extremely high bar (**);
So that made me approach the book in the opposite way I approach most things in life, with high expectations (basically my number 1 rule in everyday life is to expect the worst of everything). Surely I will not say I think it is a bad book, but I really lost interest. I knew that the translation was a challenge -- I read an article about this particular translation by the way -- it never occurred to me to actively search for the original. I confess that although I read decently in English, I still feel better reading in Portuguese and my natural inclination, or better, my gut inclination is to read the translation, even if after one second of rational thought I tell myself to go for the original. But that split second is still there (funny, isn't it?).
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(*) We, written Russian Y. Zamyatin, even if less known than the other two members of the "triad", is right over there with them quality and depth wise. It is shockingly credible in all its apparent distance from the "real" world -- a quality it inherits from the great Russian literary tradition.
(**) My personal point of view is that, as a literary stile, there is simply no counterpart for Science Fiction in the XX century, not even close. It is not only the imagination and the capacity to explore and test the possibilities of a technologically drive world (which in itself is interesting), but the most important part is that those guys main drive is to use this universe of possibilities to do real good literature. I mentioned a few names but there are far more obviously. Science fiction is often frowned upon, as it is judged by its newsstand cheap little books, but that is as accurate as to judge all the romantic literary tradition using the same kind of sample.
