Erewhon, Samuel Butler
Erewhon, Samuel Butler
List: $15.00 | Sale: $10.50
Club: $7.50

Erewhon

Author: Samuel Butler

Narrator: Peter Joyce

Unabridged: 8 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/12/2004

Categories: Fiction, Satire


Synopsis

Not only is 'Erewhon' an adventure story but also Butler's satirical inversion of English customs and philosophy in the 19th century. The explorer Higgs discovers a well organised and civilised country - apparently idyllic. However, the body politic has two ruling obsessions, disease is considered a crime and machinery is seen as a threat to the supremacy of man.In his story Butler identified certain social and industrial conditions which have since become large moral problems. Ever present poverty and encroaching technology ensure that these problems are likely to be with us for a long time. Fantasy 'Erewhon' may be, yet it still has a ring of truth and the power to disturb.

About Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and the posthumous novel The Way of All Flesh. He is also known for examining Christian orthodoxy, substantive studies of evolutionary thought, studies of Italian art, and works of literary history and criticism. Butler also made prose translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which remain in use to this day.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Manny on February 10, 2011

"I never asked to be born" says a character in The Blind Assassin, and is promptly corrected. I wonder if Margaret Atwood was thinking of Erewhon. Members of Erewhonian society are all obliged to sign a document at birth admitting that they have chosen to be born of their own free will, and obliging......more

Goodreads review by MJ on January 27, 2020

As an adventure narrative, Erewhon is a squib of the damp kind. As a satirical dystopia mocking the hypocrises of Victorian England, Erewhon is a squib of the damp kind. As a slice of narrative entertainment, Erewhon is a squib of the damp kind. As an exploration of a la mode science, encompassing a......more

Goodreads review by Douglas on November 05, 2017

I admit I skimmed over a lot of this book. It's a satire about Victorian society and frankly I'm too far removed from a lot of the issues to get much out of his turning them upside down. But the three chapters on machines-- Wow! When I read Dune in the 80s the idea of the "Butlerian Jihad" struck me......more

Goodreads review by Warren on January 07, 2022

"Erewhon" is another fictious land populated by a lost race discovered by a blonde-haired European who gives us an exhaustive account of their culture and civilization in a critique of Victorian society. I think the Victorian is the most satirized historical era in all of literature. It seems like i......more