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'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 and foppish miniature people. During his travels Gulliver is exhibited for money by the giants of Brobdingnag, gawks at the preposterous schemes of the Barnibarbian scientists, and admires the intelligent Houyhnhnms and their taming of the brutish – and suspiciously human – Yahoos.
His tales of far-away adventure are told with one eye always on the absurdity of home. In this savage satire on the politics and morals of eighteenth-century England, Swift's perceptive and ironic vision of human nature still resonates today.
