“Modern Idyl” (1877) is a satirical novel. The novel sparkles with the mastery of Aesopian language: chronological shifts, exposing domestic ugliness under the guise of a story about Zulusia and Egypt, and playing with the administrative ranks of heroes who serve as quartermasters and argue like ministers… “The heroes, under the influence of self-serving preservation, came to believe that only criminally unreliable untrustworthiness can cover and protect a person from politically unreliable untrustworthiness—and they act accordingly.”