“My main purpose in anything I do is rather to annoy than to entertain.” — J.S.

“Classics are those writers whose essential virtue, their literary grace and worth, can be likened to a time bomb: a bomb that explodes dangerously in its own time, but can also detonate in the future. In this last category of classics — although one does not exclude the other — belongs Jonathan Swift.” — ROBERTO BOLAŇO

The Modest Proposal was written at the end of the summer of 1729. It serves as the satirical reverse side of Swift’s direct social and political commentary on the miseries of Ireland. Swift had fully realized that there could be no political solution to the twisted and unyielding hostilities in Ireland. His proposal is a scathing insult directed at the political entity of the Anglo-Irish, and the author’s sympathy extends only to the indigenous Irish, infused with a sense of common humanity and hatred against tyranny.

The Modest Proposal constitutes a diabolical and insightful blow to the English reader, as well as to any hypocritical reader from any time and society, whose sluggish, complacent and dishonorable reflexes are ruthlessly shredded through the clever jest regarding cannibalism.