1984 sales soar after Trump claims, alternative facts

After incorrect or unprovable statements made by U.S. Republican President Donald Trump and some White House aides, one truth is undeniable: Sales of George Orwell's 1984 are soaring.

First published in 1949, Orwell's classic dystopian tale of a society in which facts are distorted and suppressed in a cloud of "newspeak" topped the bestseller list of Amazon.com as of Tuesday evening and the publisher has ordered an additional 75,000 copies.

Signet Classics told The Associated Press in a statement Wednesday that sales have been "remarkably robust" for a book that already is a classroom standard. The publisher noted that books such as Orwell's tap into "the fears, anxieties, and even hopes" of readers.

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The sales bump comes after the Trump administration's assertions his inauguration had record attendance and his unfounded allegation that millions of illegal votes were cast against him last fall.

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Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway coined an instant catchphrase Sunday when she called his claims about crowd size "alternative facts," bringing comparisons on social media to 1984.

Orwell's book isn't the only cautionary tale on the Amazon list. Sinclair Lewis' 1935 novel about the election of an authoritarian president, It Can't Happen Here, was at No. 46. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was at No. 71.

Sales also were up for Hannah Arendt's seminal nonfiction analysis The Origins of Totalitarianism.