Gulliver's Travels

Ship's surgeon Lemuel Gulliver survives a shipwreck and wakes bound to the ground by a net, encircled by people less than six inches tall. The Lilliputians turn out to be as small in spirit as in stature, waging wars over which end to crack an egg and drafting Gulliver into their conflict with the rival island of Blefuscu. It is only the first of four voyages: further landfalls will strand him among giants, a floating island of impractical philosophers, and a land ruled by rational horses. Jonathan Swift's satire uses Gulliver's shifting scale to turn a travelogue into a mirror held up to European society.