Ape and Essence Author:Aldous Huxley The biting novel of a world dedicated to Belial and the suppression of all of man's rebellious desires -- Huxley's shockingly sardonic successor to BRAVE NEW WORLD — complete and unabridged — APE AND ESSENCE is Aldous Huxley's savagely satirical novel of a society which tries to legislate desire. It is his horrific view of the world in... more » the twenty-second century, after the Third World War, when a civilization dedicated to "perfection" defers to the fool-proof machine. Human desire, the enemy of Reason and Order, is held in check. In APE AND ESSENCE Huxley again displays the superb manner and acute sensitivity to the challenge and dangers of our time which have made him one of this century's most perceptive satirists. "Cold horror and evoked terror lighted with sharp, Huxleyan humor..." -- SATURDAY REVIEW« less
The book has a certain awesome impressiveness, its sheer, intractable bitterness cannot but affect the reader as Huxley chants his litanies over modern civilization.