Island

Published in 1962, Aldous Huxley’s Island is the final novel of a writer whose imagination had long been occupied by the possibilities and perils of human progress. When journalist Will Farnaby is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala, he encounters a society that has spent generations cultivating a thoughtful alternative to the greed, militarism and technological obsession of the outside world. Guided by the islanders, Will discovers a culture shaped by Buddhist philosophy, attentive education, ecological responsibility and a distinctive understanding of human consciousness. Yet Pala’s fragile experiment in enlightened living faces mounting threats from those who covet its natural resources and strategic position.

Conceived as a counterpoint to Brave New World, Huxley’s celebrated dystopia, Island imagines what a society might become if scientific knowledge were joined to spiritual awareness, compassion and individual freedom. The novel draws on Eastern philosophy, psychology and Huxley’s lifelong interest in altered states of consciousness, while asking difficult questions about political power, pleasure, mortality and the possibility of lasting social harmony. Neither a simple utopia nor an uncomplicated prescription for reform, it is a searching, sometimes unsettling vision of a better world and the forces that endanger it. Written near the end of Huxley’s life, Island stands as his most sustained expression of the hope that human beings might learn to live more consciously, both with themselves and with the world around them.

From the book

“Attention, please. Here and now, boys. Here and now.”

— Aldous Huxley, Island

On Island

“Huxley’s final word about the human condition and the possibility of the good society.”

— The New York Times Book Review