Animal Farm

by George Orwell Narrated by Full Cast, Nicky Henson, Tamsin Greig

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Even if you read this in school, it's time to read it again. Under the cuddly guise of an animal society, the encroaching totalitarian state is not lost on the pigs and the hamsters of the world. It's an unexpectedly cautionary tale that's widely banned for a reason.

'All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.' Animal Farm - the history of a revolution that went wrong - is George Orwell's brilliant satire on the corrupting influence of power. Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten. And something new and unexpected emerges... This thought-provoking drama was first broadcast as part of BBC Radio's The Real George Orwell season - a Radio 4 journey that explored the disjuncture between the man who was Eric Blair and the writer who was George Orwell.

Editorial Reviews

Edmund Wilson

Absolutely first-rate...comparable to Voltaire and Swift. -- The New Yorker

From the Publisher

Animal Farm remains our great satire on the darker face of modern history.”—Malcolm Bradbury

“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.”—The 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

JUN/JUL 03 - AudioFile

George Orwell's classic satirical fable, first published in 1945, likens the Russian Revolution to events on a British farm. Led by pigs resembling Stalin and Trotsky, the animals overthrow their farmer overlord and seek to transform the farm into a collective for their mutual benefit. This is one of the key literary masterpieces in English indicting Russian communism--including THE LIGHT THAT FAILED, DARKNESS AT NOON, and Orwell's chilling 1984--that appeared before the end of the Cold War and are still worth reading today. Richard Matthews delivers the narrative in formal BBC-style tones and fully voices the characters. Perhaps because of this approach, there is nothing fabulous about the fable as he reads it. Otherwise, his is a serviceable, if undistinguished, reading. Y.R. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172749766
Publisher:	Random House UK
Publication date:	02/04/2013
Edition description:	Unabridged

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