A George Orwell fever has swept over the Thai internet after it was reported on Wednesday (29 May) that the Prime Minister recommended Orwell’s Animal Farm, because it is “a good book which has a lot of good lessons on living.”

Various editions of Animal Farm and 1984 brought by the participants of yesterday's book club

Thai netizens quickly took the Prime Minister’s advice to heart, as an edition of the Thai translation sold out on the Readery online bookstore within the night. Orwell’s 1984 also enjoyed renewed interest; Readery reportedly sold more than 50 copies of the Thai translation of 1984 on Wednesday night alone.

Written between 1943 and 1944 as an allegory of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Soviet Union, Animal Farm is now one of Orwell’s most notable works, together with 1984, Homage to Catalonia, and Burmese Days. Orwell, a democratic socialist who fought with the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War, was highly critical of Joseph Stalin and wrote the novella as a satire of what he saw as the collapse of the Socialist ideals and the enactment of a reign of terror in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

Animal Farm is not only a condemnation of tyranny. It is, more than anything, a critique of the kind of totalitarian rule which bases itself on the ideals of liberation and equality but later abandons them and turns to violent suppression of the people. Not only that, it is also a critique of power, and those corrupted by it.

(A thought experiment: replace “liberation and equality” in the above paragraph with “peace and happiness” and one may find that the idea hits close to home.) 

Like other writers of his generation, Orwell lived in turbulent times. His lifetime saw two world wars, the Cold War, and the rise of several dictators in the western world. Only four years after the publication of Animal Farm, Orwell wrote his best-known work: 1984. Today, it is one of the best-known dystopian texts in the English language, and a direct criticism of the kind of dictatorship which controls ideas and punishes individuality and independent thinking.

The book club at Chatuchak Park yesterday. The man wearing the red necktie and holding an umbrella was arrested in 2014 for reading 1984 in public. 

Netizens have been left bemused by the endorsement, as the irony of it all seemed to be lost on Gen Prayut, who overthrew an elected government in 2014 with the promise of returning happiness to Thailand. His was also the government which, in 2014, arrested people for reading 1984 in public and jailed two university students for staging Animal Farm.

A screening of the film adaptation of 1984 by the Punya movie club in Chiang Mai in June 2014 also faced interference from police officers, who called Sangdee Art Gallery – the venue of the screening – asking what the film is about and claiming that there could be some copy rights issues with the screening. The organizers subsequently decided to cancel the event. The founder of Punya Movie Club was also called by soldiers to the Kawila military camp in Chiang Mai, where he was questioned about the screening event and other art exhibitions he organized before the arrival of the NCPO.

It was not only the internet which caught onto the irony of the situation. This morning (31 May), The Nation also came out with a cartoon of a man in a pink shirt and glasses holding the book and saying “I recommend that you read this book, but I don’t recommend understanding it.” Next to him is a pig wearing numerous watches, who is writing on the wall: “all animals are equal but some animals have more generous & dead friends that others”.

Government spokesperson Lt Gen Weerachon Sukhonthapatipak said that Gen Prayut believes the book has nothing to do with Thai politics, and that he does not want people to connect everything to politics.

“What one can learn from the book is this: even though we may want to have everything that is better, we may not be able to fulfil all of our hopes, and no one can make everyone happy,” said Lt Gen Weerachon.

But who knows? Perhaps Gen Prayut thought Orwell had written Animal Farm as an instruction manual.

A small book club was subsequently held at Chatuchak Park yesterday (30 May). The 8 participants brought various editions of Animal Farm and 1984, and even a copy of Emma Larkin’s Finding George Orwell in Burma, and sat discussing Orwell’s works.

“I saw what the former PM said, and I was like, hey this is a good and interesting book. It’s worth recommending to other people, so I invited everyone to read in the park, because it’s a public park, and I thought, let’s read sitting around trees, and read Animal Farm, as Uncle Tu recommended,” said the organizer of the book club.

“I think people these days don’t read. I saw that Uncle Tu recommended people to read, so I thought, we should have a serious reading culture in the city, so I want to invite people to read, and it could become a reading club, so that we could make a lasting reading culture that goes beyond having a book fair.”

Meanwhile, another participant said that she thinks Animal Farm is a good representation of “a democracy under a dictatorship.”

“It seemed good at first, but then they overthrew themselves and used dictatorial power,” she said.

The first two participants to arrive at the book club

There have been at least nine Thai editions of Animal Farm, each of them having been released following a military coup or a period of political turbulence. The latest edition came out in 2014 – the same year as the NCPO’s military coup. This edition and another edition released in 2012 are both still in circulation, with the 2012 edition now in its sixth printing.