Panther Books
3 total works
When Aldous Huxley's Brave New World first appeared in 1932, it presented in terms of purest fantasy a society bent on self-destruction. Few of its outraged critics anticipated the onset of another world war with its Holocaust and atomic ruin. In 1948, seeing that the probable shape of his anti-utopia had been altered inevitably by the facts of history, Huxley wrote Ape and Essence. In this savage novel, using the form of a film scenario, he transports us to the year 2108. The setting is Los Angeles where a "rediscovery expedition" from New Zealand is trying to make sense of what is left. From chief botanist Alfred Poole we learn, to our dismay, about the twenty-second-century way of life. "It was inevitable that Mr. Huxley should have written this book: one could almost have seen it since Hiroshima is the necessary sequel to Brave New World."-Alfred Kazin. "The book has a certain awesome impressiveness; its sheer intractable bitterness cannot but affect the reader."-Time.
The life of Father Joseph, Cardinal Richelieu's aide, was a monstrous paradox. After a day spent in directing operations on the battlefield Father Joseph would pass the night in prayer, or in composing spiritual guidance for the nuns in his care. He was an aspirant to sainthood, a practising mystic, yet his ruthless exercise of power succeeded in prolonging the Thirty Years War, with all its unspeakable horrors. How a religious man could lead such a life, how an individual could reconcile the seemingly opposing moral systems of religion and politics, was a theme to which Huxley would continuously return.
There are three good friends: a devoted husband, a pathetically invalid wife, and a woman friend of the family. Gradually we learn that there is a terrifying truth beneath the appearance of their friendship. It has an ending you have never seen before, and it will give you the shock of your life.5 women, 5 men