Author Archives: Jotsna Jari

Review by  :   Jotsna Jari 

                 First edition cover, 1945

💜 Animal Farm   

Animal Farm (1945) is a novella by George Orwell. Orwell finished writing the draft, originally sub-titled A Fairy Story, in summer 1944. After being rejected by a number of publishers, Animal Farm was finally published in August 1945.

This is a beast fable in form of satirical allegorical novella, by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. It tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon.

‘All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.’

Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organized to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten. And something new and unexpected emerges . . .

🔺 Animal Farm is a commentary on the development of Russian communism under Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) delivered in allegorical form. The thoroughgoing allegory compares the inequalities of brutal, socially unequal pre-Revolutionary Russia with a cruelly run farm on which the humans represent the capitalists and aristocrats, and the animals represent the people.

🔻 The Old Major – a prize boar who dies relatively early in the action – represents the Marxist-Leninist principles behind the Revolution through which the animals take power. In the short term, conditions are improved, but gradually corruption creeps in, and Napoleon – another boar, who represents Stalin – betrays the principles of the Revolution. Notably, he deceitfully sends the horse Boxer, who has been a noble, hardworking servant of the original principles of the Revolution, to the knacker’s yard to fund the increasingly human-like luxuries indulged in by the pigs who have assumed control of the farm.

The final perversion of the original principles of the revolution is expressed in the line ‘all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others’, a phrase which has passed into the public consciousness.

🔺 George Orwell described Animal Farm as ‘the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole’. 

🔻 Animal Farm has also faced an array of challenges in school settings around the world. There are many examples of this controversy that has existed around Orwell’s work.

This book is banned several times.

This book was best seller also in 2019.

🔺 

The Horn and Hoof flag described in the book appears to be based on the hammer & sickle, the Communist symbol. By the end of the book when Napoleon takes full control, the Hoof and Horn is removed from the flag.

🔻 Why Animal Farm offensive :-

This book has been accused by detractors as Communist propaganda & a seditious call to overthrow the organized States.

🔺 The main of this book :-

The capacity for ordinary individuals to continue to believe in a revolution that has been utterly betrayed. 

🔻 Animal Farm so good :-

This book is a great a depiction of the Russian Revolution of 1917 & the USSR.

This shows how the leaders manipulate public over their believes.

This eye-opening book highlights the issues about betrayal, greed & inequality

in human society.

🔺

Time Magazine –

Animal Farm is one of the 100 best English-language novels.

Modern Library :-

This also featured at number 31 on the list of Best 20th-Century Novels.

Retrospective Hugo Award, 1996 :-

This book won this prestigious award. 

        Orwell’s press card portrait, 1943

❤️

Publisher‎Penguin Classics (7 January 2021)। Language‎- English। Hardcover‎- 128 pages ISBN-10‎0241453860. ISBN-13‎978-0241453865.

Review by jotsna jari

❤️ And Quiet Flows the Don :

 This is a novel in four volumes by Russian

writer Mikhail Sholokhov. The first three

volumes were written from 1925 to 1932

and published in the Soviet magazine 

Oktyabr in 1928–1932, and the fourth

volume was finished in 1940.

Sholokhov began writing And Quiet Flows the Don which took him fourteen years to complete (1926–1940). It became the most-read work of Soviet historical fiction, and it earned him the 1941 State Stalin Prize It deals with the experiences of the Cossacks before and during World War I and the Russian Civil War.

The novel is considered one of the most

significant works of world and Russian

literature in the 20th century. It depicts the

lives and struggles of Don Cossacks 

during the First World War,the Russain

Revolution, and Russain Civil War,In 1965,

Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize 

in Literature for this novel.

The book deals not only with the struggles

and suffering of the Cossacks but also the

landscape itself, which is vividly brought to

life. There are also many folk

songs referenced throughout the novel.

And Quiet Flows the Don & Mikhail

Sholokov’s opinion :

” I began the novel by describing the event of the Kornilov putsch in 1917. Then it became clear that this putsch, and more importantly, the role of the Cossacks in these events, would not be understood without a Cossack prehistory, and so I began with the description of the life of the Don Cossacks just before the beginning of World War I.”

The novel has been compared to War & Peace (1869), written by Leo Tolstoy, notably by Maxim Gorky. Like the Tolstoy novel, And Quiet Flows the Don is an epic picture of Russian life during a time of crisis and examines it through political, military, romantic, and civilian lenses.

Great Salute to…

                MIKHAIL SHOLOKHOV

‎Wentworth Press (8 March 2019) Language‎- English, Hardcover‎- 660 pages ISBN-10‎0530665832. ISBN-13‎978-0530665832 Kindle Edition. Hardcover. Paperback.