After Many a Summer Dies the Swan - Softcover

Huxley, Aldous

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060910631 ISBN 13: 9780060910631

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1983

Synopsis

A Hollywood millionaire with a terror of death, whose personal physician happens to be working on a theory of longevity-these are the elements of Aldous Huxley's caustic and entertaining satire on man's desire to live indefinitely. With his customary wit and intellectual sophistication, Huxley pursues his characters in their quest for the eternal, finishing on a note of horror. "This is Mr. Huxley's Hollywood novel, and you might expect it to be fantastic, extravagant, crazy and preposterous. It is all that, and heaven and hell too....It is the kind of novel that he is particularly the master of, where the most extraordinary and fortuitous events are followed by contemplative little essays on the meaning of life....The story is outrageously good."―New York Times. "A highly sensational plot that will keep astonishing you to practically the final sentence."―The New Yorker. "Mr. Huxley's elegant mockery, his cruel aptness of phrase, the revelations and the ingenious surprises he springs on the reader are those of a master craftsman; Mr. Huxley is at the top of his form." ―London Times Literary Supplement.

About this title

About the Author

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), one of the most important English novelists of the twentieth century, is best known for A Brave New World and other novels and short stories, including Ape and Essence and Collected Short Stories, both published by Ivan R. Dee.

Review

A comedic novel written by Aldous Huxley. Published in 1939 under the title After Many a Summer, the novel was republished under its current title later in the same year. Written soon after Huxley left England and settled in California, the novel is Huxley's examination of American culture, particularly what he saw as its narcissism, superficiality, and obsession with youth. The title is a line from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "Tithonus," about a figure from Greek mythology to whom Zeus gave eternal life but not eternal youth. In Huxley's novel, California millionaire Jo Stoyte learns of an English nobleman who discovered a way to vastly extend the human life span. Stoyte travels to England and finds the nobleman still alive, but he has devolved into an apelike creature. Stoyte decides to extend his life regardless of the consequences. --The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

About this edition

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1983
• ISBN 10: 0060910631
• ISBN 13: 9780060910631
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 244