Fall 1999

George Orwell's classic novel, Animal Farm, is an allegory about the first successful revolution by domesticated animals to break free from human exploitation. Orwell's tale is based on the history of the Soviet Union from the Communist Revolution in 1917 until the beginning of World War II, and readers know quite well that things do not go as planned on the first farm owned and operated by the animals themselves. As the pigs take over the farm governance, the other animals become as exploited under pig rule as under human domination.

Orwell was a committed socialist who believed the communist experiment in the Soviet Union would have been a great economic success were it not for its ruthless dictators, says Prof. Burton Abrams, author of the unofficial sequel, Return to Animal Farm. Evidence of Orwell's optimistic view of communism is seen in his book as the farm's output grows despite the dictatorship of the pigs. Orwell got the politics right, Abrams says, but he failed to understand the systemic economic problems of communism, which now have led to its wholesale abandonment.

Return to Animal Farm is Abrams' effort to set the record straight, allowing readers to see the farm's economic problems and the reforms that are taken in an attempt to correct them. For his story line, he uses the history of the People's Republic of China from 1979-1989.

Abrams is no stranger to China. He was awarded a Fulbright professorship to lecture there in 1984-85, and returned in 1989 as an invited professor at Nankai University. He also organized and directed a University of Delaware Winter Session program there in 1992.

As in Orwell's book, there are different levels of meaning in Return to Animal Farm, Abrams says. On one level is the ongoing story of animal interaction and life on the farm. On another is the history of China during a radical transformation period. On a deeper level are the basic economic principles that continue to create problems for the farm as it engages in reform.

"I wrote the book with an economically literate audience in mind, but I hope that a much broader audience might find the book of interest," says Abrams.