Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift

Apr 2012 · Penguin · Narrated by Hugh Laurie

About this audiobook

Penguin Classics presents Jonathan Swift's inventive classic, Gulliver's Travels, adapted for audio and now available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by Hugh Laurie, star of the hit TV series House.

'Fifteen hundred of the Emperor's largest horses, each about four inches and an half high, were employed to draw me towards the Metropolis, which, as I said, was half a Mile distant'

A savage and hilarious satire, Gulliver's Travels sees Lemuel Gulliver shipwrecked and adrift, subject to bizarre and unnerving encounters with, among others, quarrelling Lilliputians, philosophising horses and the brutish Yahoo tribe, that change his view of humanity - and himself - for ever. Swift's classic of 1726 portrays mankind in a distorted hall of mirrors as a diminished, magnified and finally bestial species, presenting us with a comical yet uncompromising reflection of ourselves.

The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Part of a series of vintage recordings taken from the Penguin Archives. Affordable, collectable, quality productions - perfect for on-the-go listening.

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About the author

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) somehow managed to balance his role as Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin with being one of the most effective, disgusted and ferocious satirists in the English language. Gulliver's Travels is both a parody of what Swift viewed as the ridiculously contrived exotic travel genre pioneered by writers such as Captain William Dampier and an incomparably vivid and funny narrative that lies at the very heart of early English fiction.