Paris-based writer and translator Adam Biles’s 2016 debut, Feeding Time, was a darkly comic tale about the rebellious residents of an old people’s home. His second novel is a homage (and sequel) to George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Described as “a state-of-the-farmyard novel”, Biles has created a political fable for our post-Brexit times. Manor Farm, now a petting zoo in southern England, is undone by narcissistic leaders and populist politics. The pigs, divided into two parties – the Animalists (“nimble, generous … Modern”) and the Jonesists (“old-fashioned, nostalgic … human-lovers”), jostle for leadership of an increasingly dysfunctional council.
The farmyard community is beset by factions, and sacred mottos are perverted for nefarious ends – “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others” takes on a whole new meaning when recalling the behaviour of certain politicians during the pandemic. Manor Farm residents discover that the bull terriers pre-sold the electricity generated by their windmill. When the windmill stops working they are left with a catastrophic debt to repay, while the store of grain left for a rainy day is empty. A murmuration of starlings is infected by robotic birds that spread vicious rumours among the farm’s inhabitants.
