Return of the animals | Review of ‘Beasts of England’ by Adam Biles, a retelling of George Orwell’s Animal Farm

It takes chutzpah to embark on a sequel to a revered classic. Villains only The above remarks should forestall the suspicion that Adam Biles’ amusing, if predictable, novel, Beasts of England, cannot be thought-provoking because it isn’t Russian enough in its appraisal of life. Biles’ rumour-spreading starlings feels like a forced after-thought rather than intrinsic to the novel. These reservations aside, Biles’ novel does speak to the cartoonish behaviour of most of the world’s so-called leaders during the COVID-19 years. Beasts of England Adam Biles Picador ₹599 The reviewer is an author, most recently of ‘The Coincidence Plot’.