A book created almost 300 years ago by the creator of Gulliver’s travels, maybe the most famous work of Jonathan Swift. For this cruel and unconventional proposal Swift has been several times matched with the reputation of writers such as De Sade or Lautreamont. Already in the past, when the love of a parent for children was less felt and less obvious than today this book generated chaotic and shocked reactions in a very various range of readers.

The apparently sincere style used to write the book matched with the idea of cannibalism created a strong reaction not just in readers of the past but maybe more and mainly in people that decide to read this book in our age. The sense of disgust and of disappointment is something that readers can still feel when they have to deal with this work.

Provocative, fierce, sharp … Most of the critics are divided in two different factions when the conversation arrive to this book: someone see Swift and his work as a provocative way to shake aims of Irish population but for others, mainly in the past, the author was seriously promoting the horrible solution contained in his work.

Created by an intelligent man often close to political speeches and political strategies this work reflect the complex point of view of a man that was a political writer and a political journalist other than a great satire creator. A man usually more careful in his works who wanted, once, allow himself to express all his disgust for an unacceptable situation. A modest proposal: for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or Country, and for making them beneficial to the Public. This was the complete title of this amazing book. Too long for being acceptable during the editing step it has been reduced to “a modest proposal” among the years.

The book express a deep contempt for the English politic in Ireland, even if the main accent is put on this contempt the author for sure doesn’t forget to complain about the weakness showed by the Irish population.

The proposal contained in the book is everything except than modest, with a fierce and sometimes horrific economical point of view the author, presented in the book as a character, make a plan to solve the problem of the overpopulation among Christian Irish.