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