Animal Farm

A satire on totalitarian government where pigs take over the farm and rule the other animals.

George Orwell (pseudonym for Eric Blair [1903-50]) was born in Bengal and educated at Eton; after service with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, he returned to Europe to earn his living penning novels and essays. He was essentially a political writer who focused his attention on his own times, a man of intense feelings and intense hates. An opponent of totalitarianism, he served in the Loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War. Besides his classic Animal Farm, his works include a novel based on his experiences as a colonial policeman, Burmese Days, two firsthand studies of poverty, Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier, an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia; and the extraordinary novel of political prophecy whose title became part of our language, 1984.

" Animal Farm remains our great satire on the darker face of modern history."--Malcolm Bradbury

 

"As lucid as glass and quite as sharp...[ Animal Farm] has the double meaning, the sharp edge, and the lucidity of Swift."-- Atlantic Monthly

 

"A wise, compassionate, and illuminating fable for our times."-- The New York Times

 

"Orwell has worked out his theme with a simplicity, a wit, and a dryness that are close to La Fontaine and Gay, and has written in a prose so plain and spare, so admirably proportioned to his purpose, that Animal Farm even seems very creditable if we compare it with Voltaire and Swift."--Edmund Wilson, The New Yorker

 

"Orwell's satire here is amply broad, cleverly conceived, and delightfully written."-- San Francisco Chronicle

 

"The book for everyone and Everyman, its brightness undimmed after fifty years."--Ruth Rendell

Since its publication fifty years ago, "Animal Farm" has become one of the most controversial books ever written. It has been translated into seventy languages and sold millions of copies throughout the world. This edition is being published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of its original U.S. publication.

It features 100 full-color and halftone illustrations by world-renowned artist Ralph Steadman. As vital and relevant as it was fifty years ago, "Animal Farm" is a devastating satire of the Soviet Union by the man V. S. Pritchett called "the conscience of his generation." A fable about an uprising of farm animals against their human masters, it illustrates how new tyranny replaces old in the wake of revolutions and power corrupts even the noblest of causes.

This anniversary edition includes Orwell's proposed but unpublished preface to the original edition and his preface to the 1947 Ukranian edition. These appendices evoke the historical context in which Orwell conceived and wrote his classic novel.

75th Anniversary Edition--Includes a New Introduction by Téa Obreht

 

George Orwell's timeless and timely allegorical novel--a scathing satire on a downtrodden society's blind march towards totalitarianism.

 

SOON TO BE A NETFLIX FILM!

 

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

 

A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned--a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.

 

When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell's masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.