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Reading lists

Must-read sci-fi classics

A collage of book covers on a light blue background. Titles include I Capture the Castle, Beloved, The Secret History and The Wind in the Willows.

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100 must-read classics, as chosen by our readers

Brave New World, Slaughterhouse 5 and The Handmaid's Tale photography

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Dystopian classics that make timely reading

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What to read after The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood on why we should all read Brave New World

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Extracts

Brave New World: A Graphic Novel

[A] highly engaging adaptation of the famous novel... Fordham utilises the graphic novel format to the full, with exciting, near-cinematic renderings of the action...that bring the narrative to life, giving Huxley's seminal work a sense of urgency and visual appeal that makes it more readily accessible for a whole new audience, while for the most part staying faithful to the original text

Aldous Huxley (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. Fred Fordham (Author, Illustrator) Fred Fordham was born in 1985 and grew up in north London. Before beginning work in comics and graphic novels he worked as a traditional portrait painter and muralist. His first published work in the medium appeared in France and he has since written and illustrated stories for various publications, most recently illustrating Philip Pullman's debut graphic-novel, The Adventures of John Blake: Mystery of the Ghost Ship.

The graphic novel adaptation of the classic dystopian masterpiece. From Fred Fordham, graphic novelist behind the sensational TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD graphic novel. 
 
Originally published in 1932, Brave New World is one of the most revered and profound works of twentieth century literature. Touching on themes of control, humanity, technology, and influence, Aldous Huxley's enduring classic is a reflection and a warning of the age in which it was written, yet remains frighteningly relevant today. 
 
With its surreal imagery and otherworldly backdrop, Brave New World adapts beautifully to the graphic novel form. Fred Fordham's singular artistic flair and attention to detail and color captures this thought-provoking novel as never before, and introduces it to a new generation, and countless modern readers, in a fresh and compelling way.

Grey Eminence

Huxley's biography of the original éminence grise, a Capuchin monk who became Cardinal Richelieu's right-hand man and a powerful policitian, whilst remaining 'a man of God'

Penetrating and vivid... This biography will rank amongst Huxley's best books.  He never wrote better; he never hit upon a more interesting theme

Grey Eminence is lucid, scholarly and thoughtful. Huxley has used all his ingenuity to explain this extraordinary character

A gripping biography by the author of Brave New World 
 
The life of Father Joseph, Cardinal Richelieu's aide, was a shocking paradox. After spending his days 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 and a practising mystic, yet his ruthless exercise of power succeeded in prolonging the unspeakable horrors of the Thirty Years' War. In his masterful biography, Huxley explores how an intensely religious man could lead such a life and how he reconciled the seemingly opposing moral systems of religion and politics.

Ape and Essence

Huxley's nightmare vision of the fate of humanity in a post-nuclear world

The ultimate horror vision -- but one not without humor

Ape and Essence leaves us in mingled respect of the author's intelligence and disgust for the world he had created

Clever, brutal, thoughtful, original...a nauseating vision of a still-possible future

Painfully and majestically vivid; it is a great piece of work

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.

A dystopian classic 
 
In February 2108, the New Zealand Rediscovery Expedition reaches California at last. It is over a century since the world was devastated by nuclear war, but the blight of radioactivity and disease still gnaws away at the survivors. The expedition expects to find physical destruction but they are quite unprepared for the moral degradation they meet. Ape and Essence is Huxley's vision of the ruin of humanity, told with all his knowledge and imaginative genius.

The Devils of Loudun

Huxley tells the strange true story of mass demonic possession and sexual hysteria which took place in the small town of Loudun in France, in the 1600s

Huxley has reconstructed with skill, learning and horror one of the most appalling incidents in the history of witch-hunting during its seventeenth-century heyday. The Devils of Loudun is fascinating, erudite, and instinct with intellectual vitality

Huxley's analysis of motive, his exposition of the unconscious causes of behaviour, his exposure of the perversions to which religious emotion is subject, his discursions on the witch cult, on mass hysteria, on sexual eccentricity have the brilliance that all his writing has had from the very beginning

His masterpiece, and perhaps the most enjoyable book about spirituality ever written. In telling the grotesque, bawdy and true story of a 17th-century convent of cloistered French nuns who contrived to have a priest they never met burned alive ...Huxley painlessly conveys a wealth of information about mysticism and the unconscious

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.

A gripping biography by the author of Brave New World 
 
In 1634 Urbain Grandier, a handsome and dissolute priest of the parish of Loudun was tried, tortured and burnt at the stake. He had been found guilty of conspiring with the devil to seduce an entire convent of nuns. 
 
Grandier maintained his innocence to the end but four years after his death the nuns were still being subjected to exorcisms to free them from their demonic bondage. Huxley's vivid account of this bizarre tale of religious and sexual obsession transforms our understanding of the medieval world.

Antic Hay

'Huxley brings extraordinary vigour and gusto to every page he writes' Spectator

Few present-day writers would dare to be so heroically encyclopaedic, such ardent gleaners of gossip and table talk as well as of the profounder reveries of literature, history, science and religion

The great uniting principles that swept mankind along in their current have lost their force, and Huxley's intellectuals find themselves in a maelstrom formed by the new forces of the time. For them, life has become boring, futile, full of ennui. So we get the 'Antic Hay', the dance of profane love, but with the wood-wild strains of Pan broken up into the hesitating rhythms demanded by the fever of modern life. Huxley has a fine sensibility and his wit and fresh vision lend Antic Hay a crystalline quality

Aldous Huxley came to literary fame in 1921 with his first novel, Crome Yellow. With the novels Antic Hay, Those Barren Leaves and Point Counter Point, Huxley quickly established a reputation for bright, brilliant satires that ruthlessly passed judgement on the shortcomings of contemporary society. In later life, exploration of the inner life through mysticism and hallucinogenic drugs dominated Huxley’s writing, including his first-person account of experiencing mescaline in The Doors of Perception. Aldous Huxley died in 1963.

WITH A FOREWORD BY DAVID LODGE 
 
When inspiration leads Theodore Gumbril to design a type of pneumatic trouser cushion to ease the discomfort of sedentary life, he decides the time has come to give up teaching and seek his fortune in the metropolis. He soon finds himself caught up in the hedonistic world of his friends Mercaptan, Lypiatt and the thoroughly civilised Myra Viveash, and his burning ambitions begin to lose their urgency. . . 
 
Wickedly funny and deliciously barbed, Antic Hay epitomises the glittering neuroticism of the twenties.

Crome Yellow

Huxley mocks the fads, foibles and spirit of his time with an unsurpassed wit and brilliance

Delightful. Crome Yellow is witty, worldly and poetic

I find it hard to keep my enthusiasm for Crome Yellow within decent bounds. It is at once irresistibly funny and shrewd in its criticisms of daily life

With a strong, delightful and admirable talent for caricature, Huxley is at his entertaining best in his grimaces at modern movements and at the ridiculous earnestness of the young

The tone of Huxley's story matches the title: it is a rich, full yellow which suggests the exhilarating glow of summer

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MALCOLM BRADBURY 
 
Denis Stone, a naive young poet, is invited to stay at Crome, a country house renowned for its gatherings of 'bright young things'. His hosts, Henry Wimbush and his exotic wife Priscilla, are joined by a party of outlandish guests whose intrigues and opinions ensure Denis's attemps to woo the young Anne Wimbush are met with every possible obstacle. 
 
First published in 1921, Crome Yellow was Aldous Huxley's much-acclaimed debut novel.

Aldous Huxley

Welcome to New London. Everybody is happy here. 
 
INTRODUCED BY MARGARET ATWOOD 
 
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&rsquo;s deeply sinister and prophetic novel, a society based on maximum pleasure and complete surveillance &ndash; 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 
 
'Huxley's great dystopian novel' Guardian 
 
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

Aldous Huxley

Brave New World

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