Animal Farm: 75th Anniversary Edition (Signet Classics)
75th Anniversary Edition—Includes a New Introduction by Téa Obreht
George Orwell's timeless and timely allegorical novel—a scathing satire of a downtrodden society’s blind march towards totalitarianism.
“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.
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Readers say *Animal Farm* is a concise, impactful satire about how power can corrupt through manipulation and control, making political ideas accessib...
I'm only giving this 4 stars because of the historical and political significance of this "Who Stole My Cheese" book. It's not exactly Alice in Wonderland, but on the other hand, it's not exactly Ayn Rand, either. Thus, 4 stars for this book, after I spent about 3 hours reading it. Yep, Stalin was a murderer/dictator, and a pig.
This book was required reading when I was in middle school but I definitely appreciate it more as an adult. The more things change the more they stay the same. The creativity of using different animals to portrait different types of citizens in an oppressive regime was uncanny and unique. This book is one of my favorite satirical pieces.
Read when at school as a "prescribed reading" book.[return][return]Even as a teenager I was able to understand that it was an allegorical story where the farmyard is being used to describe and comment on Communism. It gives rise to some ideas that have entered the general language e.g. "all (animals) are equal, but some are more equal than others". [return][return]As someone who grew up in the 70s and 80s, and therefore very aware of the cold war, Communism and the nuclear threat, it was easy for me to grasp the anologies. It would be interesting to see if the generations that have come after the Soviet Empire fell in the 1990s understand and appreciate the book.
A short book that makes for a perfect introduction into how communism works in practice on country scale. The Soviet regime and story is put into a small animal farm. So now even kids can understand how it nearly always works. How intellectual people convince the working class to take power from the bourgeois. And then how the intellectual communists keep the power and then play a "get to the top game" where losers are killed off. Great book. In fiction it does not get better than this.