Animal Farm by George Orwell
The intro to this book talked about the world the author was going up in and the fears of the time. I read this book after 1984 and I could definitely see many of the same themes running through both books.
The brevity of the book was nice, and using animals allowed us to avoid a lot of the story build up that would have been necessary for a book with people, because people are much more complex. If you read this first and like it, then I would say 1984 would be a good follow-up.
This is one of the books in Daria’s Reading List that I’m working on getting through.