BEASTS OF ENGLAND

BEASTS OF ENGLAND ADAM BILES

Manor Farm has reinvented itself as the South of England’s premium petting zoo. Now, instead of a working farm, humans and beasts alike are invited (for a small fee) to come and stroke, fondle, and take rides on the farm’s inhabitants. But life is not a bed of roses for the animals, in spite of what their leaders may want them to believe. Elections are rigged, the community is beset by factions and sacred mottos are being constantly updated. The Farm is descending into chaos. What’s more, a mysterious ‘illness’ has started ripping through the animals, killing them one by one ... In Beasts of England, Adam Biles honours, updates and subverts George Orwell’s classic, all the while channelling the chaotic, fragmentary nature of populist politics in the Internet age into a savage farmyard satire. Adam Biles is an English writer and translator based in Paris. He is the Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company, from where he hosts their weekly podcast, and where he curated the podcast series Friends of Shakespeare and Company Read Ulysses. Feeding Time, his first novel, was published by Galley Beggar Press and was a book of the year for the Observer andIrish Times.