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Books like 1984 and Animal Farm

The books recommended to readers of 1984 by George Orwell and Animal Farm by George Orwell — ranked by how well they match both, not just one.

  1. We book cover
    On both lists

    We

    Yevgeny Zamyatin

    The book Orwell reviewed shortly before writing his own, and it shows: glass apartments, numbered citizens, a mathematician who falls for the wrong woman and stops adding up.

  2. The Handmaid’s Tale book cover
    On both lists

    The Handmaid’s Tale

    Margaret Atwood

    Atwood's Gilead runs on informants, scripted greetings and a rewritten past, and like Winston, Offred's rebellion is mostly the act of remembering who she used to be.

  3. Fahrenheit 451 book cover
    On both lists

    Fahrenheit 451

    Ray Bradbury

    The same warning delivered from a different angle: nobody had to seize power here, the population simply agreed that thinking was tiring. Short, furious, and set for the same classes.

  4. Brave New World book cover
    On both lists

    Brave New World

    Aldous Huxley

    The other half of the argument. Orwell's state controls you with a boot; Huxley's does it with pleasure, and the unsettling part is how much nicer it looks from inside.

  5. The Giver book cover
    On both lists

    The Giver

    Lois Lowry

    A community that solved its problems by editing what people are allowed to know, and one boy handed the deleted files. Orwell's mechanism, pitched at a younger reader.

Prefer to start from just one? Books like 1984 · Books like Animal Farm

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