Voyage to Kazohinia

This impressive satirical novel, written in 1935 and published in 1941, has Lemuel Gulliver shipwrecked in the Indian Ocean during the 1930s and details his experiences in the isolated country of Kazohinia. The narrator has much the same tone as the original character in Gulliver’s Travels. He describes the two kinds of people living in that country: the Hins, an advanced society without culture, finance, love, politics, patriotism or war, and the Behins, a ghettoised chaotic population that live according to the subversion of reason.

The author, Sándor Szathmári (born 19 June 1897), was the son of a Hapsburg state official and his upbringing involved frequent relocation to different parts of the empire. His delicate health prevented him from serving in the war and instead he was living in poverty in Budapest while studying engineering in the city’s Technical University. As a student he began writing, being influenced by the writer Frigyes Karinthy, who himself wrote a sequel to Gulliver's Travels, in his case called Voyage to Faremido (1916). He began writing novels in 1930 and this, his magnum opus, was published with a dedication to Karinthy. Much of his subsequent literary output was written in Esperanto and he’s regarded as one of the few Esperantist literary figures worthy of wider attention.

The outset of Gulliver’s adventures in 1935 has Britain facing the probability of having to wage a war with Italy over Abyssinia. Gulliver, an officer in the Royal Navy, is aboard H.M.S. Invincible bound for Shanghai (to protect Britain’s interests in the Far East) when it is sunk by a torpedo and he survives with the aid of a lifebelt. He is well received in Kazohinia, an island country where everything is expected to be kazo (rational), the name of the country meaning “the land of those who know the pure reality of human existence”. He is taught about kazo by Zatamon, a Hin, and he in turn tries to explain European society and its values. There is a huge gap in understanding between the two. Zatamon is critical of every aspect of European society. For example:
“Though your kings travel by coaches of gold and wear robes of state heavy with all kinds of jewels (which are of course unnecessary), they still don't permit the people to use their remaining energy for the benefit of their own physical well-being but force them to build a pyramid for themselves or wage war to reduce other peoples to destitution as well.”
When Gulliver despairs at the sterility of the Hin way of life, he decides to enter the settlement of the Behins (those who do not live with reference to reason but subvert what is rational). The Behins are divided into two warring factions that regularly slaughter each other even though their disagreement is entirely nonsensical and concerned with emblems. Whereas much of Hin society are utopian and the Behin settlement dystopian, the picture is not black and white — Gulliver draws some comfort from aspects of Behin life and is tormented by aspects of Hin life.

The pinnacle of the satire comes at the end of the novel when Gulliver has fled Kazohinia and is rescued by a Royal Navy battleship. The admiral of the ship makes a patriotic speech, echoing the Behin obsession with symbols and confirming the Hin suspicion of the senselessness of European politics and culture:
“Respect for military values and the national ideal is the source of life of the people, without which our fate would be death and ruin... For the time being we don't know whether the war to come will be fought against the Germans, the French or the Japanese but wherever we shall be called by His Majesty’s order we shall hasten without thought or hesitation to defend the flag, that much is certain.
I firmly believe that when the bugle call is heard, every citizen, regardless of sex and age, will be happy to sacrifice his or her life for these ideals and the flag, for even if all of us should die, Great Britain and her ideals will live forever!”