Animal Farm is one of those books the reading of which can mark you for life: I was eighteen when I first read it, and it created in me an aversion to all totalitarian regimes, whatever their ideology. It is entertaining, and well-written, and in reading it, children and adults, whatever their situation, can by a stretch of imaginative outreach, can find their own dictator portrayed there.
Superb book, and there is a superp appreciation of it at The Guardian: Christopher Hitchens re-reads Animal Farm:
"There is a timeless, even transcendent, quality to this little story. It is caught when Old Major tells his quiet, sad audience of overworked beasts about a time long ago, when creatures knew of the possibility of a world without masters, and when he recalls in a dream the words and the tune of a half-forgotten freedom song. Orwell had a liking for the tradition of the English Protestant revolution, and his favourite line of justification was taken from John Milton, who made his stand 'By the known rules of ancient liberty'. In all minds – perhaps especially in those of children – there is a feeling that life need not always be this way, and those malnourished Ukrainian survivors, responding to the authenticity of the verses and to something 'absolute' in the integrity of the book, were hearing the mighty line of Milton whether they fully understood it or not."
