This story, written in 1943 and 1944 while Orwell was working as a journalist and commentator for (among others) the BBC Orwell vents his profound disdain for Stalinism and his dissapointment with Marxism as political praxis. A particularly English brand of Socialist with a towering social concience Orwell himself not only campaigned on behalf of teh ILP but had the courage of his convictions to join the Poum in the fight against fascism in Spain in 1937. However, dissapointed and endangered by the political machinations of Stalins Russia in Spain and disgusted by the Molotov Ribbentrop non aggresion pact of 1939 and early communist rhetoric against involvement in World War 2 as a capitalist war, Orwell turns his not inconsiderable facility for satire against totalitarian socialism. Not so much against the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 but against the hypocracy, the repressiveness that that revolution descended into from the dreath of Lenin. This is one of teh best books in the English Language written by one of the most viscerally intelligent, humain, geniuses of the pen to have lived. It comes highly recommended.
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