It features 100 full-color and halftone illustrations by world-renowned artist Ralph Steadman. As vital and relevant as it was fifty years ago, "Animal Farm" is a devastating satire of the Soviet Union by the man V. S. Pritchett called "the conscience of his generation." A fable about an uprising of farm animals against their human masters, it illustrates how new tyranny replaces old in the wake of revolutions and power corrupts even the noblest of causes.
This anniversary edition includes Orwell's proposed but unpublished preface to the original edition and his preface to the 1947 Ukranian edition. These appendices evoke the historical context in which Orwell conceived and wrote his classic novel.
"As lucid as glass and quite as sharp...[Animal Farm] has the double meaning, the sharp edge, and the lucidity of Swift." -Atlantic Monthly
"A wise, compassionate, and illuminating fable for our times." -New York Times
"Orwell has worked out his theme with a simplicity, a wit, and a dryness that are close to La Fontaine and Gay, and has written in a prose so plain and spare, so admirably proportioned to his purpose, that Animal Farm even seems very creditable if we compare it with Voltaire and Swift." -Edmund Wilson, The New Yorker
"Orwell's satire here is amply broad, cleverly conceived, and delightfully written." -San Francisco Chronicle
"The book for everyone and Everyman, its brightness undimmed after fifty years." -Ruth Rendell
With an Introduction by Julian Symons