Animal Farm. A Fairy Story

Preface by Giancarlo Rossini

Preface by Giancarlo RossiniGeorge Orwell (1903-1950) was a British writer, journalist and political activist, most famous today for Animal Farm and 1984, who joined the group of the great masterpieces of world literature.

Orwell was always very interested in politics and from a young age he developed a deep intellectual hatred of all types of totalitarianism, which he fought both on the front line and with his writings, both in non-fiction and fiction, during his short but intense existence. Political activism and writing were always closely intertwined in George Orwell Orwell's life: he first demonstrated this as a novelist when, in 1945, he published Animal Farm.

The animal farm tells in allegorical form, that of a farm where animals take power with a revolution, outlining a system in which some species are "more equal", or more powerful than others, the birth of a dictatorial system inspired by that of the then Soviet Union, which in the years in which Orwell conceived this novel was structuring itself as a real totalitarian regime. In the leftist circles of Western Europe at that time there was not a little attention, and often even a certain admiration, for what was happening in Russia: with this novel Orwell intended to explicitly address his contemporaries, to open their eyes to the fact that, for when based on noble ideals, a dictatorship still remains a dictatorship.

Orwell, who had always declared himself a socialist, attracted a lot of hostility from British leftist circles when Animal Farm was first published. In 1945 Britain was still allied with Russia against Nazi Germany, and a similar book seemed to cast doubt on its patriotism. However, George Orwell was anything but unpatriotic, indeed: his was an intellectual struggle against all forms of totalitarianism.

Just in conjunction with the publication of Animal Farm, George Orwell released an essay entitled The Freedom of the Press which is placed in the preface to the novel. Unfortunately, Freedom of the Press was released to the public only many years after its author's death in 1972: its contents were too explicitly critical of the British media system. In this short essay, Orwell analyzes the mechanisms of censorship, but also of self-censorship, of any country considered free, such as Great Britain was in 1945. His current and prophetic gaze makes this essay still very interesting.