About This Book
Animal Farm is the rare political fable that works as pure storytelling even if you know nothing about the Russian Revolution it satirizes. The animals of Manor Farm overthrow their human master and establish a utopia based on equality and shared labor. And then, gradually, almost imperceptibly, the revolution devours itself. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Orwell wrote this in 1945, but he could have written it about any revolution in any century, because the pattern he describes is not specific to Stalinism—it is something in human nature, or at least in the nature of power. These two Orwell books together constitute one of the most important things I have ever read.
Animal Farm works as a perfect companion to Orwell's later masterwork 1984, which extends these themes of propaganda and power into a fully realized dystopian nightmare. Together, these two works form the essential canon of political fiction.