When Gulliver finds himself washed up on the shores of the island of Lilliput inhabited by ‘little people’ and taken prisoner his life is to change forever but that is just the beginning of his story. For following his escape from Lilliput his travels take him to the huge people of Brobdingnag, the floating island of Laputa and to the land of Houynhnmland where there are horses with great virtues. The characters are wonderfully drawn, and Gulliver has a great talent for the languages of each land and his travels also provide bitter insights into human behaviour. It is in the end an uncompromising reflection of mankind in its many guises but riveting all the same and essential reading.
HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.'I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.'Shipwrecked on the high seas, Lemuel Gulliver finds himself washed up on the strange island of Lilliput, a land inhabited by quarrelsome miniature people. On his travels he continues to meet others who force him to reflect on human behaviour - the giants of Brobdingnag, the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos. In this scathing satire on the politics and morals of the 18th Century, Swift's condemnation of society and its institutions still resonates today.