Brave New World
This prescient novel describes a future in which an 'ideal' society has come to pass, controlled by genetic engineering, infant indoctrination, pleasure drugs and sex without commitment, where people live in a blissed-out state of overconsumption.
Seemingly alone in his scepticism, the 'Alpha Plus' psychologist Bernard Marx begins to voice critical opinions about this brave new world . . .
Aldous Huxley's skilful prose coolly depicts a world in which spontaneous human desires and emotions have been overwritten by psychically anaesthetizing public mantras - 'everyone belongs to everyone else', 'everybody's happy nowadays'. His brilliantly vision of a bland yet menacing dystopia sounded a bleak warning during the inter-war years of 1930s Britain, and resonates as much today as it did on publication.