Some authors make such an impact they become adjectives. Without even reading their work most know what “Byronic,” “Dickensian,” and “Kafkaesque” suggest, but no term is as chilling as “Orwellian.” It connotes a dystopian society ruled by a ruthless and manipulative government that suspends its misinformed populace in fear while under constant surveillance. These themes of course permeate George Orwell’s final major work, 1984, but these dark seeds are also found in the “fairy story” (its original subtitle) that he published four years earlier: Animal Farm, a novella still taught to middle school kids.

Indeed, Andy Serkis, director of a new computer-animated movie version of the thinly veiled allegory of the Soviet Union, said in an interview that he first encountered the story at age 11 and that it spoke to him deeply. The 2026 version, which took Serkis 15 years to realize, is a bit of a headscratcher, but it is also, in its way, perfect for our current cultural climate. It moves the story from the United Kingdom to the United States, it’s got fart jokes, the distribution company is shilling merch riffing on the MAGA hat, and there’s a gloriously irrelevant rap song at the end. (You must listen to this. You absolutely must.)

Some authors make such an impact they become adjectives. Without even reading their work most know what “Byronic,” “Dickensian,” and “Kafkaesque” suggest, but no term is as chilling as “Orwellian.” It connotes a dystopian society ruled by a ruthless and manipulative government that suspends its misinformed populace in fear while under constant surveillance. These themes of course permeate George Orwell’s final major work, 1984, but these dark seeds are also found in the “fairy story” (its original subtitle) that he published four years earlier: Animal Farm, a novella still taught to middle school kids.

Indeed, Andy Serkis, director of a new computer-animated movie version of the thinly veiled allegory of the Soviet Union, said in an interview that he first encountered the story at age 11 and that it spoke to him deeply. The 2026 version, which took Serkis 15 years to realize, is a bit of a headscratcher, but it is also, in its way, perfect for our current cultural climate. It moves the story from the United Kingdom to the United States, it’s got fart jokes, the distribution company is shilling merch riffing on the MAGA hat, and there’s a gloriously irrelevant rap song at the end. (You must listen to this. You absolutely must.)

A still from Animal Farm.Angel Studios

Animal Farm is for many the first “smart person book” they read. And it’s no wonder why it continues to resonate with thoughtful kids. For starters, it’s a funny story about pigs and horses trying to run a farm on their own. It has broadly drawn characters representing clearly defined social attitudes. (One does not need to know specifics about the Great Purge or the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to follow along.) It’s got violence, it’s got mystery, and it’s got some easily understood distrust of authority culminating in the famous transformation of the phrase “All animals are equal” into “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others”—a paradoxical statement as perfect as 1984’s climactic assertion that “2 2=5.”

If it’s been a while since you’ve last picked it up, Orwell’s novella is set on small English farm run by the drunken Mr. Jones. An elderly prize boar, Old Major (representative of Karl Marx with a dash of Lenin), has a dream of a utopian farm free of humans, where there is equality, pride in hard work, and a fair reward of retirement, not slaughter. After a battle, the animals take over, but they soon discover that self-government is not........

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