Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society.

Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers.

Bernard Marx seems alone in feeling discontent. Harbouring an unnatural desire for solitude, and a perverse distaste for the pleasures of compulsory promiscuity, Bernard has an ill-defined longing to break free.

A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress - Huxley's ingenious fantasy of the future sheds a blazing light on the present and is considered to be his most enduring masterpiece.