Quite an excellent Swiftian cautionary tale, showing how an alternate reality of totalitarian control can be created. Of course it’s designed to show how the Bolsheviks and especially Stalin corrupted the Russian revolution, but it has the effect of making one question one’s own belief in the fairness of society. I felt quite unusually unhappy with the state of the world after reading it, which is of course the intention. As a device for innoculating one against propaganda it’s certainly very effective. Very happy I read it. It certainly deserves it’s status as a 20th century classic, and never more relevant than today with the increasingly fantastic (in the old sense of the word) propaganda put out by Putin’s government in Russia.