Zvířecí statek – Orwell George (2021)

In this allegory of the collapse of Bolshevik revolutionary ideals, prize boar the Mayor, pride of Mr Jones’s farm, offers the exploited animals an enticing solution at the end of his life: they must throw off their chains and drive out the ultimate source of their oppression, the human who has claimed the fruits of their labour. Rebellion on the backward farm soon follows, but because every society, including animal self-government, needs order, the Mayor’s fellow pigs take the leading role. The revolutionaries’ determination, rules, dreams and unbreakable unity begin to crumble when, alongside human enemies, Animal Farm is attacked by a treacherous internal foe. Demagoguery, hunger, terror and violence soon prevail. This entirely new Czech translation of George Orwell’s famous satirical dystopia is aimed at generations already freed from communist fantasies of a bright future. Inspired by the atrocities of Stalin’s Great Terror, Orwell warned Europe against idealising tales of egalitarianism and showed how one form of oppression can be replaced by another. The Czech-language book features evocative colour illustrations by Boris Jirků.