Oryx and Crake: a novel

Margaret Atwood

For my family

I could perhaps like others have astonished you
with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose
to relate plain matter of fact in the simplest
manner and style; because my principal design
was to inform you, and not to amuse you.

Jonathan Swift,
Gulliver’s Travels

Was there no safety? No learning by heart of
the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter,
but all was miracle and leaping from the
pinnacle of a tower into the air?

Virginia Woolf,
To the Lighthouse