George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair, an Englishman born in Bengal, India, and educated at Eton in England. After service with the British colonial Indian Imperial Police in Burma, he returned to Europe to earn his living writing novels and essays. Bitterly opposed to social injustice, political oppression, and verbal cant in every form, he was a socialist who attacked both capitalism and communism, a literary critic who savaged all that he saw as false to life as it was lived and reality as it was, and a novelist who merged his profound political concerns with superbly honed narrative artistry. Besides his classic Animal Farm, his major 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. George Orwell died in 1950, of a neglected lung disease.A fantasy of world politics in which farm animals revolt to form a society in which everyone is meant to be equal.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.Orwell's brilliant 1946 satire, chronicling a revolution staged by the animals on Mr. Jones's farm.Animal Farm was George Orwell's satirical shot at the then-new totalitarianism of the left. It is so accurate that no one has been able to do it better or more effectively, or even come close. Who can forget "All Animals Are Created Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others." By putting wisdom in the mouths of animals, Orwell uses an age-old artifice and proves again how the pen can be mightier than the sword.In this controversial classic fairy tale, 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, setting the stage for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned. Illustrations and Orwell's proposed but unpublished preface are included in this anniversary edition. Reissue.
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