Erewhon - by Samuel Butler (Paperback)

About the Book

"In Erewhon, an anagram for "nowhere," sickness is a punishable crime, criminals receive compassionate medical treatment, and machines are banned, lest they evolve and take over"--

Book Synopsis

"[Takes] imagination of a very high order to see that machinery could be dangerous as well as useful." --George Orwell, celebrated author of Animal Farm and 1984

A utopian classic with a rich legacy-influencing authors from Huxley to Herbert and beyond-Erewhon satirizes Victorian society with biting insight still relevant today.

When Higgs, a young traveler, stumbles upon the beautiful land of Erewhon, he soon discovers that its seemingly ideal culture is founded upon bizarre, unsettling beliefs. Crime is a sickness, while sickness is a crime; the greatest scholarly achievement is unreason, and all machines have been eliminated for fear of artificial intelligence. In a society that suppresses originality, the traveler and his values are a threat. Torn between escape and Arowhena, the woman he has grown to love, Higgs must contend with Erewhon's strange ways-and with the challenges they pose to his own beliefs.

Engaging with the work of Charles Darwin and inspired by the author's time in colonial New Zealand, Erewhon is a bright, irreverent, and enduring text about technology, religion, crime, and institutional rigidity. This new edition of the 1872 classic arrives in honor of its 150th anniversary, featuring a brilliant introduction contextualizing the book from one of New Zealand's great academic thinkers in science fiction, Dr. Octavia Cade.

Review Quotes

"[Takes] imagination of a very high order to see that machinery could be dangerous as well as useful." --George Orwell

About the Author

Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works, including the Utopian satire Erewhon and the posthumous novel The Way of All Flesh, his two best-known works. Butler also made prose translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey which remain in use to this day.