Which book make up the list of books like Animal Farm? Despite its brevity, George Orwell’s famous satire Animal Farm has retained much of its original impact over the course of the seven decades since its publication.
Surprisingly deep themes of social justice, political correctness, and the value of education may be found in a story about farm animals.
Have you been on the lookout for more thought-provoking social and political commentary? Find the perfect books for your reading list here.
Books like Animal Farm that provoke deep thought and have become cultural icons have not lost their currency.
1. 1984
- By George Orwell
First on our list of books like Animal Farm is 1984, written by George Overall. London in 1984 is a depressing place where Big Brother watches over everyone, and the Thought Police can decipher your innermost thoughts. Simply because his memory is still functional, Winston is a guy at severe risk.
Winston’s illegal romance gives him the strength to join The Brotherhood, a revolutionary group committed to overthrowing the Party. He and Julia, his true love, are engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the establishment.
2. Brave New World
- By Aldous Huxley
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, is a classic of world literature that foretells a dystopian future in which humans are selectively bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order at the expense of their individuality, humanity, and possibly even their souls.
Huxley was a man of unmatched skills, “a genius who spent his life condemning the relentless march of the Machine” (The New Yorker), and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and society.
His masterwork, Brave New World, has captivated and scared millions of readers and continues to have a strong impact today as a warning to be taken seriously as we go forward and as a thought-provoking, fulfilling piece of literature.
Although it was written in response to the development of fascism in the 1930s, Brave New World is just as relevant to our own day and age, with its emphasis on mass media, technology, medicine, pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the covert power of the elite.
3. A Clockwork Orange
- By William Golding
The protagonist of this classic from 1963 is a violent droog who is fifteen years old. Alex, the protagonist of Anthony Burgess’s nightmarish future in which criminals take control at night, tells the narrative in a cruel, created vernacular that beautifully conveys the social pathology of himself and his buddies.
The story of A Clockwork Orange is a terrifying cautionary tale about the nature of good and evil and the value of individual liberty.
A Clockwork Orange is indeed one of the many fascinating books like Animal Farm you should read.
In an effort to “redeem” Alex, the state decides to put him through a program of rehabilitation, but the book begs the question, “At what cost?”
4. Lord of the Flies
- By William Golding
An aircraft carrying a bunch of schoolboys crashes on an undiscovered island during the start of the next global war.
At first, they relish their independence from parental control. In such a remote location, they are free to do as they choose.
As chaos ensues, unearthly cries fill the night, and horror takes hold, the prospect of adventure seems improbable as a rescue. Lord of the Flies is indeed one of the very interesting books like Animal Farm worth reading.
5. The Metamorphosis
- By Franz Kafka
After a night of disturbing nightmares, Gregor Samsa awoke to discover he had been transformed into a hideous beast in his bed.
Franz Kafka opens his masterwork, The Metamorphosis, with a line that is at once shocking, weird, and hilarious.
The protagonist is a young guy who, after waking up one morning looking like a giant beetle, is shunned by his family, feels like an alien in his own house, and is the very definition of an alienated human being.
The Metamorphosis is one of the most widely read and influential pieces of literature in the twentieth century and also one of the most captivating books like Animal Farm.
It is a terrible but hilariously humorous meditation on human emotions of inadequacy, shame, and solitude.
6. Flatland
- By Edwin Abbott
A man’s strength increases according to his number of sides in Flatland. The triangles are the troops and workers. Mid-class professionals like physicians and attorneys are represented by squares and pentagons. Noblemen like hexagonal shapes.
However, women are flat and can only go forward in a one-dimensional society. Until the day an ordinary citizen, a Square, begins to fantasize about a world with three dimensions, life in Flatland is straightforward.
If we can imagine life in three dimensions, then why not four? Or one? As a result of the Square’s provoking imagination and subsequent adventures, the citizens of Flatland may soon turn against him.
Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, first published in 1884, two decades before Einstein’s theory of relativity classified time as the fourth dimension, is a fascinating investigation of the invisible and a humorous parody of Victorian social mores.
7. The Pearl
- By John Steinbeck
Kino, Juana, and their newborn boy eke out a living as impoverished divers like his father and grandfather before him, harvesting pearls from the gulf beds that once gave immense treasure to the Kings of Spain.
Then, on a seemingly ordinary day, Kino comes up on shore clutching a pearl as big as an egg from a seabird and as flawless as the moon. Hope, ease, and safety are all promised when one has a pearl.
One of the many books like Animal Farm, The Pearl is a narrative of timeless simplicity, adapted from a Mexican folktale, that delves into the mysteries of humanity, the depths of evil, and the bright potential of love.
8. The Trial
- By Franz Kafka
A famous book from the early 20th century, The Trial, one of the books like Animal Farm, tells the horrific story of Josef K., a respected bank official.
He is suddenly and abruptly imprisoned and must defend himself against a charge about which he can receive no information.
Kafka’s nightmare has resonated with terrifying reality for generations of readers, whether interpreted as an existential narrative, a parable, or a premonition of the excesses of contemporary bureaucracy wed to the lunacy of dictatorship.
9. The Dispossessed
- By Ursula K. Le Guin’
Utopian anarchists from Urras, a planet very unlike Earth, colonized the moon Anarres centuries ago in pursuit of a fresh start.
Shevek, an exceptional scientist, is now resolved to bring together the two warring cultures that have been at odds since long before his birth.
The Dispossessed, also one of the books like Animal Farm, is an insightful look at modern society and humankind, as well as one man’s bold attempt to challenge the status quo and spark a revolution.
10. Fahrenheit 451
- By Ray Bradbury
You may call Guy Montag, a firefighter, for help. His world is one where firefighters intentionally set fires rather than extinguish them because television has replaced reading.
He is responsible for destroying both the homes where illicit books are concealed and the books themselves.
Montag returns each day to his dull existence with his wife Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family” and never considers the damage and ruin his activities bring.
But then he meets Clarisse, an eccentric teenage neighbor. She shows him a world where people don’t have to constantly worry about being attacked and where people get their information from books rather than meaningless babble on television.
Montag’s worldview shifts after Mildred’s suicide attempt and Clarisse’s disappearance. When the firefighter discovers where he has been secretly storing books, he has to flee for his life, just like in other fascinating books like Animal Farm.
11. The Handmaid’s Tale
- By Margaret Atwood
With its vivid descriptions and chilling predictions, The Handmaid’s Tale is a story that will stay with you long after you finish it.
A monotheocracy that has responded to social discontent and a steeply dropping birthrate by returning to and going beyond the oppressive intolerance of the original Puritans, the novel is set in a near future version of the United States, now known as the Republic of Gilead.
Incredibly, the dictatorship accepts the Book of Genesis at its value, which has incredible results for the country’s women and men.
Offred, a Handmaid in the dystopian future, narrates the tale. She writes concisely yet eloquently, shifting between expressions of chilly objectivity, tenderness, despair, passion, and dry humor as she exposes the shadowy underbelly of the establishment when specific current trends are taken to their logical extremes.
The Handmaid’s Tale manages to be all at once hilarious, shocking, horrific, and utterly believable. It’s a tour de force that is hilarious and terrifying.
The book represents Margaret Atwood at the height of her writing career. The Handmaid’s Tale is also listed as one of the books like Animal Farm worth reading.
12. Invitation to a Beheading
- By Vladimir Nabokov
Invitation to a Beheading, like Kafka’s The Castle, is an embodiment of a vision of a surreal and illogical universe.
Young Cincinnatus C. is sentenced to death by beheading in an unidentified dream kingdom for the undefined offense of “gnostical turpitude.”
Cincinnatus spends his last days in a ludicrous jail, where he receives visits from chimerical jailers, an executioner who poses as a fellow inmate, and his in-laws, who bring all their furnishings into his cell.
Just before he is killed, Cincinnatus wills his tormentors and their world to vanish. Vladimir’s Invitation to a Beheading is also one of the many books like Animal Farm.
