Satire
As a logician, Zinoviev was able to reduce many features of Soviet communism to what he calls "scientific laws". The book is also filled with numerous paradoxes and logical twists, à la Catch 22. The book begins with a logically-reflexive definition: a preface claims that the book details the result of an experiment. The preface identifies the purpose of the experiment as follows:
- "to uncover those who disapprove of its implementation, and to take the appropriate measures".
One satire in a late chapter is that, after conquering the whole world in the Great Ibanskian Kissoff, the leaders of Ibansk discover another nation, Sub-Ibansk, whose inhabitants live underground beneath Ibansk and subsist of the sewage generated by Ibansk.
Read more about this topic: Yawning Heights
Famous quotes containing the word satire:
“What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word politic, which now for the ages has signified cunning, intimating that the state is a trick?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Comedy has to be done en clair. You can’t blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little—or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)