NSA PRISM: George Orwell's '1984' is flying off the shelves

In the wake of recent revelations regarding the secret National Security Agency surveillance program known as PRISM, George Orwell's classic dystopian novel "1984" has seen a surge in sales on Amazon.com.

Published in 1949, the novel explored a future with omnipresent government surveillance and propaganda from a tyrannical party leader known only as Big Brother.

In the days following Edward Snowden's leak of top-secret documents detailing the clandestine collection of electronic communications data by U.S. intelligence, three different editions of "1984" climbed hundreds of spots on the Amazon Movers & Shakers chart.

The Centennial Edition in particular rose from being ranked 12,859 to 184 -- a sales increase of nearly 7,000 percent.

It should be noted that the novel is classic literary fiction and appears on summer reading lists at high schools across the country. Still, the novel's skyrocketing sales mirror the sudden interest in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" following the 2008 financial crisis.