Animal Farm

"A delightfully humorous and caustic satire on the rule of the many by the few." ¿ Animal Farm, The Guardian. "What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice." ¿ George Orwell "One cannot help but be struck by the degree to which he (George Orwell) became, in Henry James's words, one of those upon whom nothing was lost. By declining to lie, even as far as possible to himself, and by his determination to seek elusive but verifiable truth, he showed how much can be accomplished by an individual who unites the qualities of intellectual honesty and moral courage." -- Christopher Hitchens "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."¿ George Orwell, Animal Farm. This little volume contains one of the most prophetic and chilling novels of the twentieth century¿¿Animal Farm. Orwell clear-sightedly looks at humanity and human nature and shows us what could go terribly wrong, in a story for all ages. Orwell wrote Animal Farm - A Fairy Story in three months from November 1943 to February 1944. It was only published in August 1945 because it was seen for what it was: a critique of Stalin's Soviet Union, which, much to Orwell's disgust, was a strategic ally of the United Kingdom. It was then an immediate world-wide success. Financially, Orwell was able to buy a home in the Hebrides, where he would spend much of the rest of his life, and write Nineteen Eighty-Four. Animal Farm is even more relevant today in a world of failed revolutions than when it was written. George Orwell (born Eric Blair, 1903, Motihari, Bengal, died Jan 1950, London)was a leading British writer of the twentieth century. He studied at Wellington College and Eton (1917-1921) where he was a King's Scholar. After Eton, he followed family tradition and joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, until 1927 when, disgusted by imperialism, he resigned to pursue his boyhood dream of being a writer. He published an autobiographical book Down and Out in London and Paris, with Victor Gollancz Ltd. under his pen name of George Orwell. This established his literary career. Orwell was a prolific journalist, essayist, novelist and nonfiction writer. He is remembered for his prescient writing and his unwavering commitment to truth and clarity of expression. His last two novels--Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four--have placed him at the pinnacle of British literature.