ABOUT THE BOOK

This allegorical novella by George Orwell reflects the events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. The revolt of the animals against Farmer Jones is Orwell's analogy with the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The Battle of the Cowshed has been said to represent the allied invasion of Soviet Russia in 1918, and the defeat of the White Russians in the Russian Civil War. The pigs' rise to pre-eminence mirrors the rise of a Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR, just as Napoleon's emergence as the farm's sole leader reflects Stalin's emergence. The book's close, with the pigs and men in a kind of rapprochement, reflects Orwell's view of the 1943 Teheran Conference that seemed to display the establishment of the best possible relations between the USSR and the West.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

George Orwell was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism. His literary works include Animal Farm (1945), Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), Homage to Catalonia (1938), In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".