Sunday 29 July 2012

21 Faces of Brave New World – Happy Birthday, Aldous Huxley

Best remembered for his novel Brave New World, author Aldous Huxley wrote ten other novels and nearly that many collections of short stories. Today would be his 118th birthday. The circumstances of his death are interesting – not only did he request (and receive) a hefty intravenous dose of LSD on his deathbed, but also the date of his death, November 22nd 1963, is infamous. Huxley died that day, as did C.S. Lewis. Most memorably of all, the assassination of American president John F. Kennedy (JFK) was the same day.
Brave New World was Huxley’s fifth novel of 11. It was published originally in 1932, and is famously futuristic and dystopian, depicting a society starkly different in terms of rules and roles around sex, family, government, drugs, socialization and much more. Reproduction is largely unrecognizable next to its current iteration (and certainly when compared to 1932). Modern critics often remark upon some of the more shrewd and prescient aspects of the novel that have come to some degree of fruition – the deadening of the masses with electronics, the apathetic numbing by consumerism and such.
It is widely considered one of the finest English-language novels ever written. But while it may have been written in English, it is now available for non-English readers, too – the novel has been translated into over 25 languages. It has also had some spectacular covers. Here are 21 covers of the novel – 9 English, and 4 each of the Spanish, German and French translations. Hard to decide which is my favorite.
English language Brave New World covers: