# Erewhon

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/samuel-butler/erewhon/9780140430578

![Erewhon](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin-classics/samuel-butler/erewhon_978-01-4043-057-8.jpg?v=2026-04-23%2003%3A35%3A35)

- Book: [Erewhon](https://www.bookquiver.com/samuel-butler/erewhon) ([Erewhon.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/samuel-butler/erewhon.md))
- Authors: [Samuel Butler](https://www.bookquiver.com/samuel-butler)
- Publisher: penguin_classics
- ISBN: 978-01-4043-057-8
- Pages: 272
- Published: 2006-02-23
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

Setting out to make his fortune in a far-off country, a young traveller discovers the remote and beautiful land of Erewhon and is given a home among its extraordinarily handsome citizens. But their visitor soon discovers that this seemingly ideal community has its faults - here crime is treated indulgently as a malady to be cured, while illness, poverty and misfortune are cruelly punished, and all machines have been superstitiously destroyed after a bizarre prophecy. Can he survive in a world where morality is turned upside down? Inspired by Samuel Butler's years in colonial New Zealand and by his reading of Darwin's Origin of Species, Erewhon (1872) is a highly original, irreverent and humorous satire on conventional virtues, religious hypocrisy and the unthinking acceptance of beliefs.