Animal Farm - by Orwell

I just finished reading George Orwell's Animal Farm. It was a brilliant piece of writing, one of the best that I have managed to lay my hands on in recent times. It was a poignant satire on rise and fall of communism depicted through the lives of animals inhabiting a farm in an English countryside. The concept of communism in its true sense is great - with equality for everyone being its core principle. But how it fails in implementation such that in the end it is hard to tell friends from enemies and people fail to distinguish if they were more miserable before or after embracing communism ('Animalism' in the book).

The book is full of symbolism - each character depicts someone/something (primarily in the context of USSR). A brief description of Animal Farm symbolism/interpretation can be found here. The author brilliantly portrays the dissolution of principles - from the seven commandments changing over time as per the convenience of the so-called leaders. 'No animal shall sleep in a bed' becoming 'No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets', 'No animal shall drink alcohol' to 'No animal shall drink alcohol in excess' and 'No animal shall kill another animal' becoming 'No animal shall kill another animal without cause'. And in the end it is replaced by one single profound all-encompassing commandment "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others".