BRAVE NEW WORLD
Welcome to New London. Everybody is happy here.
Our perfect society achieves peace and stability by dispensing with monogamy, privacy, money, family and history itself. Now everyone belongs. You can be happy too. All you need to do is take your Soma pills.This is the brave new world of Aldous Huxley's deeply sinister and prophetic novel, a society based on maximum pleasure and complete surveillance - no matter the cost.
'A masterpiece of speculation... As vibrant, fresh, and somehow shocking as it was when I first read it' Margaret Atwood, bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale
'A grave warning... Provoking, stimulating, shocking and dazzling' Observer
One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World
INTRODUCED BY MARGARET ATWOOD AND DAVID BRADSHAW
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Aldous Huxley was born on 26 July 1894 near Godalming, Surrey. He began writing poetry and short stories in his early 20s, but it was his first novel, Crome Yellow 1921 , which established his literary reputation. This was swiftly followed by Antic Hay 1923 , Those Barren Leaves 1925 and Point Counter Point 1928 - bright, brilliant satires in which Huxley wittily but ruthlessly passed judgement on the shortcomings of contemporary society. For most of the 1920s Huxley lived in Italy and an account of his experiences there can be found in Along the Road 1925 . The great novels of ideas, including his most famous work Brave New World published in 1932, this warned against the dehumanising aspects of scientific and material 'progress' and the pacifist novel Eyeless in Gaza 1936 were accompanied by a series of wise and brilliant essays, collected in volume form under titles such as Music at Night 1931 and Ends and Means 1937 . In 1937, at the height of his fame, Huxley left Europe to live in California, working for a time as a screenwriter in Hollywood. As the West braced itself for war, Huxley came increasingly to believe that the key to solving the world's problems lay in changing the individual through mystical enlightenment. The exploration of the inner life through mysticism and hallucinogenic drugs was to dominate his work for the rest of his life. His beliefs found expression in both fiction Time Must Have a Stop,1944, and Island, 1962 and non-fiction The Perennial Philosophy, 1945; Grey Eminence, 1941; and the account of his first mescaline experience, The Doors of Perception, 1954 . Huxley died in California on 22 November 1963.
Edad recomendada: Adultos.
HUXLEY ALDOUS
Escribió más de un centenar de libros de los géneros más diversos, entre los que destacan Un mundo feliz, La isla y Las puertas de la percepción. Murió de cáncer en su residencia de Los Ángeles en 1963, bajo los efectos del LSD que había solicitado su esposa mientras esta le recitaba al oído textos sagrados.
