The Human Paradise

The Human Paradise (1930) is a scathingly sarcastic satire in which God offers to grant wishes expressed unanimously by the entirety of humankind. The wishes voiced are carefully extrapolated in such a way as to suggest that, however effective individuals might be at screwing up their wishes, a committee composed of the whole human race could do a far more comprehensive job.

An Isle of Amour (1921) is interesting addition to a sequence of French utopian novels that attempted to get to grips with the thorny question of how best to organize sexual relations in a utopia, and what the social consequences would be of instituting a system of “free love.”