Gulliver’s Travels

After a series of incidents, including being involved in a car crash and being dropped from a helicopter, a man named Gulliver finds himself washed ashore in a land full of tiny people called Lilliputians. This is not the Gulliver of old however; this is his descendant, and he’s about to discover an unnerving world. The Lilliputians now live in a booming, modern society, but the most sickening of bodily substances is the sole source of wealth and success. The leaders of Brobdignag, inspired by the elder Gulliver, dismantled their society in order to return it to its purest state—a goal achieved by killing off farmers and doctors, echoing of the tactics of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Laputa has been turned into the “permanent host to the Global Diplomatic Perpetual Plenary Summit,” an ineffective legislative body that does little and debates much. Rowson, an English cartoonist and satirist best known for his work in the Guardian, offers illustrations capturing how corporations, globalization, and misguided political theory have horribly disfigured the lands, peoples, and languages that the original Gulliver visited; his crosshatching and fierce lines capture his rage at a world that is seemingly spinning out of control. (Nov.)