Animal Farm is a novella by George Orwell, and is the most famous satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism. Published on 17 August 1945, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era.

Orwell, a democratic socialist, and a member of the Independent Labour Party for many years, was a critic of Joseph Stalin, and was suspicious of Moscow-directed Stalinism after his experiences with the NKVD during the Spanish Civil War.

The short novel is an allegory in which animals play the roles of the Bolshevik revolutionaries and overthrow and oust the human owners of the farm, setting it up as a commune in which, at first, all animals are equal; class and status disparities soon emerge, however, between the different animal species. The novel describes how a society’s ideologies can be manipulated and twisted by individuals in positions of social and political power, including how a utopian society is made impossible by the corrupting nature of the very power necessary to create it.

The book was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels (1923 to 2005) and was number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels.