Credit where it’s due, Ayn Rand writes brilliantly lucid prose. Her world building in all of her novels is extremely detailed and precise. Reading Anthem, her first work after reading her later novels, is certainly a unique insight into how she developed her philosophy. Anthem is where “Objectivism” was born. This philosophy, that she later expanded with The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, is no doubt flawed, but no one can accuse it of being weak.

But what I dislike the most about her work, like everyone else, is her utter contempt for socialism in all its forms. It’s really a tragedy that her flawed philosophy has shaped so much of our popular politics. Her incomplete knowledge of socialism and her vilification of it raise some serious questions about the ethics of her characters in all her work. And in more ways than one, her characters in Anthem are even more unrealistic and unconvincing than her later works.