Vintage Satire: "Gulliver's Travels", "Atomised"

Description

"Vintage Satire" is a limited edition gift pack which consists of beautifully designed separate volumes of "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift and Michel Houellebecq's controversial bestseller "Atomised." "Vintage Satire" is just one of ten "Vintage Classic Twins" to collect. Each twin consists of two books: a specially designed limited edition of one modern classic title and one established classic work. The books in each pair have been carefully selected to provide a thought-provoking combination. In the course of his famous travels, "Gulliver's Travels": In the course of his famous travels, Gulliver is captured by miniature people who wage war on each other because of religious disagreement over how to crack eggs, is sexually assaulted by giants, visits a floating island, and decides that the society of horses is better than that of his fellow man. Swift's tough, filthy and incisive satire has much to say about the state of the world today and is presented here in its unexpurgated entirety. "Atomised": Half-brothers Michel and Bruno have a mother in common but little else. Michel is a molecular biologist, a thinker and idealist, a man with no erotic life to speak of and little in the way of human society. Bruno, by contrast, is a libertine, though more in theory than in practice, his endless lust is all too rarely reciprocated. Both are symptomatic members of our atomised society, where religion has given way to shallow 'new age' philosophies and love to meaningless sexual connections. A dissection of modern lives and loves, it is by turns funny, acid, infuriating, didactic, touching and visceral.

Jonathan Swift was born on 30 November 1667 in Dublin, and educated at Trinity College and Oxford University. After working for a time as secretary to Sir William Temple in England, Swift was ordained as a priest of the Church of Ireland and returned to Dublin in 1695. In 1713 he became Dean of St Patrick's. The first of his major satirical works, A Tale of a Tub, was published in 1704 and through his writing he became close friends with the poet Pope. Together with other writers, they founded a literary group called the Martinus Scriblerus Club in 1714. Gulliver's Travels (1726) is the only book for which he received any money and he never wrote under his own name. He died on 19 October 1745 and was buried in St Patrick's. Michel Houellebecq lives in County Cork, Ireland. He is the bestselling author of Whatever, Atomised, Platform, Lanzarote and The Possibility of an Island. He is also a poet, essayist and rap artist.