Two modern classics in one volume.

This unauthorized companion to George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a controversial parable about September 11th by one of fiction’s most inventive and provocative writers Written in 14 days shortly after the September 11th attacks, Snowball’s Chance is an outrageous and unauthorized companion to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, in which exiled pig Snowball returns to the farm, takes charge, and implements a new world order of untrammeled capitalism. Orwell’s “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” has morphed into the new rallying cry: “All animals are born equal—what they become is their own affair.” A brilliant political satire and literary parody, John Reed’s Snowball’s Chance caused an uproar on publication in 2002, denounced by Christopher Hitchens, and barely dodging a lawsuit from the Orwell estate. Now, a decade later, with America in wars on many fronts, readers can judge anew the visionary truth of Reed’s satirical masterpiece.

1984 and Animal Farm portray George Orwell's prescient understanding of modern life-the power of media, the distortion of language, and the suppression of individual thought and expression. Required reading for students since they were first published, these are two of the most disturbing and powerful novels ever written.

This is a dystopian social science fiction novel and morality tale. The novel is set in the year 1984, a fictional future in which most of the world has been destroyed by unending war, constant government monitoring, historical revisionism, and propaganda. The totalitarian superstate Oceania, ruled by the Party and known as Airstrip One, now includes Great Britain as a province. The Party uses the Thought Police to repress individuality and critical thought. Big Brother, the tyrannical ruler of Oceania, enjoys a strong personality cult that was created by the party's overzealous brainwashing methods. Winston Smith, the main character, is a hard-working and skilled member of the Ministry of Truth's Outer Party who secretly despises the Party and harbors rebellious fantasies.

A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick With extraordinary relevance and renewed popularity, George Orwell’s 1984 takes on new life in this edition. “Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power.”—The New Yorker In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be. Lionel Trilling said of Orwell’s masterpiece, “1984 is a profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating book. It is a fantasy of the political future, and like any such fantasy, serves its author as a magnifying device for an examination of the present.” Though the year 1984 now exists in the past, Orwell’s novel remains an urgent call for the individual willing to speak truth to power.

ANIMAL FARM: The novel was chosen by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present. Although, it almost remained unpublished due to its savage attack on Stalin, Britain's then ally and got turned down by publisher after publisher, today it's known to be one of Orwell's best works and a world-famous classic. The animals on Mr. Jones' farm revolt against their human masters and violently expel them. Led by the pigs they decide to run the farm themselves on egalitarian principles. In Course of time the pigs themselves become corrupted by power and a new tyranny is established under their leader Napoleon. Cast in the form of a satirical fable directed primarily against Stalin's Russia, Animal Farm by George Orwell tells us how power game can become the quintessential story of greed, corruption, betrayal and ruination. NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR: 1984 is the author's haunting vision of the future. In 2005, it was added to the 100 Best English Language Novel from 1923 to 2005 by TIME magazine. It is a dystopian novel by English author George Orwell published in 1949. The novel is set in Airstrip One, a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation. It is dictated by a political system named English Socialism under the control of the Inner Party, that persecutes individualism and independent thinking. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thought-crime, Newspeak, Room 101, telescreen, 2 + 2 = 5, and memory holes, have entered into common use since its publication.

Two of the greatest and most influential works of the twentieth century, together in one edition: 1984, with an introduction by Charlotte Wood, and Animal Farm, with an introduction by Don Watson. George Orwell’s novels about the dangers of tyranny, the corruption of the state and the enslavement of the individual are essential reading. In an era of doublespeak, they remain chillingly prophetic.