Sales of Orwell’s ‘1984’ Soar After NSA Surveillance Shock

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Sales of George Orwell's classic dystopian novel "1984" have shot up on Amazon.com amid new disclosures about surveillance and spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) in the U.S.

(Read More: NSA Leaker's Firm Got Rich Off Government Secrets)

Sales of "1984" have risen by 166 percent in the past 24 hours, according to Amazon's "movers and shakers" list, which charts the books with the sharpest sales increases.

The novel, which depicts a totalitarian state with omnipresent government surveillance, may ring bells with readers shocked by revelations that the NSA allegedly collected vast amounts of users' data from internet companies like Google, Facebook and Apple.

(Read More: How the NSA's Prism Might Work and Why That Matters to You)

Such is the current interest in "1984" that it is the only book on Amazon's list of top "movers and shakers" that is not a new release.

The novel was first published in 1949, during the days of the Soviet Union, whose regime inspired the novel.

Also on the Amazon list is a new book called "Big data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think".

In the book's description on Amazon, its authors call big data the "hottest trend" in technology, and describe it as the ability to "crunch vast collections of information, analyze it instantly, and draw sometimes profoundly surprising conclusions from it".

—By CNBC's Katy Barnato