Who Would Like This Book:
If you love big ideas and thought-provoking fiction, Brave New World is a classic that delivers! Aldous Huxley's vision of the future is eerily prescient, filled with clever satire about mass entertainment, consumer culture, and what we sacrifice for security and happiness. It's perfect for readers who enjoy dystopian worlds like 1984 or Fahrenheit 451, and for anyone interested in ethics, technology, or questions about individuality in society. The world-building is fascinating, the writing can be witty, and its philosophical debates are still relevant today.
Who May Not Like This Book:
Some readers don't click with this book because the characters feel flat or unsympathetic - Huxley prioritizes social commentary over deep character development. The opening chapters are heavy on exposition and world-building, which might put off those who want an immediate plot hook. The style can sometimes feel dated or overly clinical, and the book’s focus on sex, conditioning, and drug use can be uncomfortable for some. Lastly, if you’re looking for a fast-paced or uplifting read, the book’s mood and pacing might not be for you.
About:
'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley is a dystopian novel that presents a future society where people are genetically engineered and conditioned to fit into specific societal roles. The story follows characters like Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne as they navigate a world where happiness is superficially guaranteed through recreational sex, drugs, and conditioning. The arrival of an outsider named John Savage challenges the norms of this society, leading to a clash of cultures and a questioning of what it means to be truly human. Huxley's writing style is described as thought-provoking, satirical, and ahead of its time, offering a critique of modern consumer culture and technological progress.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content warnings include graphic descriptions of drug and sexual behavior, themes of eugenics, and societal conditioning.
From The Publisher:
Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order whose motto is "Community, Identity, Stability."-all at the cost of our freedom, humanity, and perhaps our souls.
"A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine" (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history's keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning as we head into tomorrow and as a thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World likewise speaks to a twenty-first-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.
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15 comment(s)
Easy to see why it’s a classic. A vividly eerie and tragic world that brings up many important questions of the cost of comfort, efficiency, industry, and pleasure. And the importance of art, beauty, passion, and pain.
Brilliant and thought-provoking.
it is a good book and talks about important things but i judt didnt find it too interesting and reading/listening to it was just uncomfortable
Don't know what the moral of the story was when all I can remember is an unhinged amount of crazy.
“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
A classic way ahead of its time. Sadly its language & style is of its time making it a bit dull & repetitive in place. Takes some getting used to.
Ending is better than mending. The more stiches, the less riches
Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery... Happiness is never grand
This is certainly a quirky, surreal read. Its very much a fantasy novel, with some bizarre terminology present. I can't claim to have fully followed everything that went on in the plot but I enjoyed reading it for the most part, as it was a somewhat engrossing read, even poignant at times and as a classic piece of literature, I'd recommend it to others.
(watched Peacock series 7/2020)
I didn’t care about the characters in the least and that made it really hard to finish the book, even as short as it was. I understand the greater importance of the book is the dystopian and caste system of governance, but I still disliked the story and its characters.
hated the idea, the way he dehumanised people. i get it was the point, and i like distopias, but i just don’t think this was a good one.
What can you read after
Brave New World?
About the Author:
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.
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