# The best George Orwell books

Beyond 1984 and Animal Farm: Orwell's reportage, essays and early novels, ranked by readers' votes and critics' picks.

- 4 votes · 12 items
- Jun 5, 2021 · austinartnerd
- https://even.best/en/l/3058/the-best-george-orwell-books

## Top 12

1. **Nineteen Eighty-Four** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — 1949. Big Brother, Newspeak and the dystopia everyone quotes.
2. **Animal Farm** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — 1945. The fable of the pigs who end up like their masters.
3. **The Road to Wigan Pier** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — 1937. Life among northern England's miners.
4. **Shooting an Elephant** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — 1936. The essay about the empire and a crowd's pressure.
5. **Homage to Catalonia** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 1938. His time in the Spanish Civil War with the POUM militia.
6. **Down and Out in Paris and London** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 1933. Poverty from the inside, washing dishes and tramping.
7. **Burmese Days** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 1934. A novel drawn from his years as a colonial policeman.
8. **Coming Up for Air** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 1939. A middle-aged man returns to the village of his childhood.
9. **Keep the Aspidistra Flying** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 1936. A poet at war with money.
10. **A Clergyman's Daughter** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 1935. A woman who loses her memory and her place in the world.
11. **Politics and the English Language** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 1946. The classic essay against vague, dishonest prose.
12. **Why I Write** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 1946. His four motives for writing.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.