9 h 27 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if falling ill makes you a criminal, while dishonesty earns you care?
A young Englishman crosses a mountain range in search of sheep country and finds a land that overturns his expectations. In Samuel Butler’s Erewhon; Or, Over the Range, the stranger must navigate laws that make sickness a crime. His own country’s standards prove a poor guide to the people who take him in.
Mr. Nosnibor welcomes the traveller, while a bond with his gentle daughter Arowhena gives this strange journey a private heart. Around them, banks hold money nobody spends, colleges teach nothing useful, and machines are banned for fear of their future power. Beneath the dry jokes, Butler tests the gap between what society says and what it does.
What you’ll discover
- Beyond the mountain pass Follow a hard climb through cold, rain, glaciers and broken rock toward an unfamiliar country.
- Laws turned inside out Meet people who punish illness and treat dishonesty as a condition that needs care.
- Lessons in useful nonsense Visit the Colleges of Unreason, where the best young people learn things nobody needs.
- The fear of machines Explore an argument that asks whether machines might one day rule their makers.
- A stranger finds affection Discover Arowhena, whose honesty and bond with the traveller bring warmth to the satire.
Who will love it
For readers who love dry humour, travellers' tales and ideas turned inside out to be looked at fresh, with satire about religion, money, schooling, health and science.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A young man goes looking for sheep country
- The pass is guarded by singing statues
- Strangers are searched, tested and taken in
- Sickness is a crime; crime is an illness
- The Musical Banks and the goddess Ydgrun
- The Colleges of Unreason teach nothing useful
- The Book of the Machines argues for destruction
- Animals, plants and the guilt of birth
- What the satire is really about and how it is told
Who’s who
- The narratorA young, ambitious Englishman who crosses the mountains to find sheep land, and who judges a strange people by his own country's standards.
- ChowbokThe narrator's older guide, who knows the high country and fears what lies beyond the range, and who will not go farther.
- Mr. NosniborA respected citizen of Erewhon who hosts the stranger and who once had his dishonesty treated as an illness.
- Mrs. NosniborThe host's wife, fond of fashion and social standing, who treats the stranger with a mix of curiosity and fuss.
- ZuloraThe elder Nosnibor daughter, who is proud and fashionable and keeps a sharp eye on the stranger.
- ArowhenaThe younger Nosnibor daughter, who is gentle and honest and whose bond with the stranger drives the story's private plot.
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- Audiobook
- 9 h 27 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 14 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Erewhon; Or, Over the Range
by Samuel Butler · 1872
A young Englishman crosses a mountain range into a land where illness is a crime and machines threaten to rule.
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In short
Erewhon is a satirical novel by Samuel Butler, published without his name in 1872. It tells of a young Englishman who leaves home to make his fortune as a sheep farmer in a faraway colony.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A young man goes looking for sheep country
The story is told by a young Englishman whose name is hardly used. He has left home for a new colony, which the book never names but which readers have long taken to be New Zealand. He hopes to find good grazing land, take up a sheep run and grow rich. The early chapters describe this life with real knowledge, because Butler had lived it.
The narrator takes a post on a sheep station among the foothills. He works hard, learns the country and listens to talk of the great mountain range that shuts in the valley. Beyond it, the shepherds say, lies land that nobody has mapped. The thought of empty pasture that no other farmer has claimed excites him far more than his wages do.
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What is Erewhon about?
Erewhon is about a young Englishman who crosses a mountain range and finds a hidden country whose laws are the reverse of Victorian ones. Through it, Butler mocks English ideas about illness, religion, money, schooling and machines.
What does the name Erewhon mean?
Erewhon is almost the word nowhere spelled backwards, with two letters swapped to make it easier to say. It points to the old idea of Utopia, a name that also means no place.
Is Erewhon based on New Zealand?
The opening chapters draw on Butler's own years as a sheep farmer in the hills of New Zealand in the early 1860s. The land of Erewhon itself is invented, and its exact place is never given.
The author
Samuel Butler
1835–1902 · English novelist and critic
Samuel Butler (1835–1902) was an English novelist and critic. He was born in Langar, Nottinghamshire, lived in New Zealand from 1859 to 1864, and then settled in London. He published Erewhon in 1872 and The Authoress of the Odyssey in 1897. The Way of All Flesh appeared after his death, in 1903.
More by Samuel Butler
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