George Orwell's 1984 is Amazon's best-selling book right now for some reason

If you think the phrase “alternative facts” sounds like something out of 1984, it seems you’re not alone.

Since Kellyanne Conway coined the phrase in an interview about crowd sizes at Donald Trump’s inauguration, the George Orwell novel – set in a dystopian future with widespread government surveillance – has surged to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list in the US.

When Conway used the phrase, talking about press secretary Sean Spicer’s description of the inauguration as having the “largest audience ever”, many people drew comparisons to the Orwellian concept of “doublethink”.Doublethink is described in 1984 as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them”.

Of course, it’s difficult to know what exactly inspired the surge in popularity of the 68-year-old novel, but by yesterday afternoon it was top of Amazon’s bestseller list in the US – seven places ahead of Donald Trump’s The Art Of The Deal. Orwell’s classic also reached the top 20 in the UK.

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Also in the top 20 Stateside were Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. You may spot a theme developing.

A spokesman for publishers Penguin told CNN: “We put through a 75,000 copy reprint this week. That is a substantial reprint and larger than our typical reprint for 1984.”