 
|
Those Barren LeavesAuthor: Aldous Huxley British Literature Series January 1997 320 pages, 5.5 x 8.5 Paperback, 1-56478-169-0 Retail Paperback Price: Our Paperback Price: $11.16 
|
Book Description
Aldous Huxley spares no one in his ironic, piercing portrayal of a group gathered in an Italian palace by the socially ambitious and self-professed lover of art, Mrs. Aldwinkle. Here, Mrs. Aldwinkle yearns to recapture the glories of the Italian Renaissance, but her guests ultimately fail to fulfill her naïve expectations.
Among her entourage are: a suffering poet and reluctant editor of the Rabbit Fanciers' Gazette who silently bears the widowed Mrs. Aldwinkle's desperate advances; a popular novelist who records every detail of her affair with another guest, the amorous Calamy, for future literary endeavors; and an aging sensualist philosopher who pursues a wealthy yet mentally-disabled heiress.
Stripping the houseguests of their pretensions, Huxley reveals the superficiality of the cultural elite. Deliciously satirical, Those Barren Leaves bites the hands of those who dare to posture or feign sophistication and is as comically fresh today as when first published.
About the Author
| Considered to be one of the most significant British writers of the twentieth century, Aldous Huxley is the author of a dozen novels, including Time Must Have a Stop, Antic Hay, Crome Yellow, and Those Barren Leaves, all of which are available from Dalkey Archive Press. He also wrote over thirty volumes of poetry, short stories, and essays during his lifetime. |  |
Praise
"The many-toned wit of the book, the beauty and shrewdness of its descriptions, the learning, the thought, the richness of character, the intellectual and artistic honesty of it . . . show that Mr. Huxley . . . will be a great novelist."—Times Literary Supplement"It is brilliant and daring . . . humorous, witty, clever, cultured."—Nation and Athenaeum
"Brilliantly done; Those Barren Leaves has humour, daring, some excellent fooling, remarkable erudition and plenty of Huxley's salacious irony."—Guardian
"Huxley has never written a richer book."—Nation
"Huxley has an utterly ruthless habit of building up an elaborate and sometimes almost romantic structure and then blowing it down with something too ironic to be called satire and too scornful to be called irony."—F. Scott Fitzgerald
More Information
Also by Aldous Huxley:Antic Hay
Crome Yellow
Point Counter Point
Time Must Have a Stop