The Behins, however, occupy an irrational society in which living conditions are supported by the ruling Hins while they themselves are preoccupied with what to the protagonist seem to be senseless ceremonies and all too frequent violent brawls.

This part of the novel is in fact satire, with each insanity of the Behins translating to facets of the Western, Christian society of the protagonist such as war, religion, etiquette, art, and philosophy.

Language-wise, the novel is surprisingly accessible even at those points when the reader is swamped in an abundance of neologisms with which the Hins and the Behins refer to their strange notions and concepts of life.

But most leading scholars in Hungary today believe he first wrote it in his native tongue, Hungarian, and that once he became sufficiently fluent in Esperanto, he then translated the book into that language as well, with some assistance from Kálmán Kalocsay.

According to this view, when the Esperanto journal Literatura Mondo, which had accepted it, went out of business at the start of the Second World War, he rewrote it or translated it into Hungarian, resulting in its publication in that language in 1941.

Beyond being an often overlooked classic of Hungarian literature that enjoys a cult-like status in its native land, Kazohinia is considered one of the main original novels in Esperanto, in which its title is Vojaĝo al Kazohinio.

On such good advice do satirists and speculative sorts venture forward into worlds as varied as Oz, Lilliput, 1984's Oceania, and--now--Kazohinia.

In an old world voice with postmodern tones, Sandor Szathmári's Voyage to Kazohinia takes a comic knife to our various conceptions of government, skewering our efforts to determine the most expedient social arrangement for populations to adopt.