Author(s): Martin Rowson

Classics

"On 5th November 1699 the Merchant Ship Antelope foundered on a rock in the Latitude of 30 Degrees 2 minutes South. The only survivor of the crew was the ship's physician, Lemuel Gulliver, who some hours later awoke, bound, on a beach in the Empire of Lilliput. On 31st August 1997, Gulliver's direct (although unwitting) descendent was being driven back from a conference in Paris when, going through an underpass, his vehicle was struck with great force from behind. Rendered unconscious, he was next aware of being thrown from a helicopter into a shallow sea, from whence he waded ashore. On awaking next morning, he finds himself bound, and being addressed by tiny figures welcoming him to...Lilliput. Jonathan Swift's classic satire about little people, big people, crazy scientists and rational horses has not only gripped our imaginations for nearly 300 years; it's also one of the greatest - while also most humane - indictments of humanity ever written. Now, the award winning cartoonist and writer Martin Rowson has followed Swift's hero's descendent as, quite by chance, he finds himself visiting the same places, three centuries later. Thus the Modern Gulliver learns how history has unfolded for the Lilliputians, while discovering the secrets of 'New' Lilliput's economic boom, and accidentally precipitating its crash. He finds out how the giants of Brobdingnag were inspired to transform their way of life by his ancestor's example of being one of 'the most pernicious Race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the Earth'. Gulliver's Travels, adapted and updated by Martin Rowson, is both a homage to the original and an entirely up-to-date indictment of the same, enduring human idiocies that enraged Swift so magnificently and memorably in the first place."