Gulliver's Travels

Swift wrote what may be the most ruthlessly misanthropic book in the English language, dressed up as a children's adventure tale. Gulliver's journeys to four impossible lands become a distorting mirror in which we see humanity's pettiness, cruelty, and absurd pretensions reflected back in horrifying detail. In Lilliput, he watches tiny beings wage war over which end of an egg to crack. In Brobdingnag, he is reviled as the most filthy and loathsome creature his giant hosts have ever seen. The voyage to Laputa exposes pretentious scholars so absorbed in abstract mathematics they cannot button their own clothes. And then comes the final destination: a land of rational horses who regard humans with disgust. By the time Gulliver returns home, he cannot tolerate the smell of his own wife and children. This is satire that starts amused and ends in genuine despair.