Brave New World

• Genre: Fiction; dystopian science fiction
• Originally Published: 1932
• Reading Level/Interest: College/Adult
• Structure/Length: 18 chapters; approx. 288 pages; approx. 8 hours, 30 minutes on audio
• Protagonist/Central Conflict: In the World State, humans are engineered for perfection and efficiency and drugged to maintain the authoritarian state. Bernard Marx, a psychologist, vocally disapproves of the State’s methods of population control, putting him at risk for exile until he meets John, the biological son of his boss, who he can use as leverage to keep his position in society.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Domestic violence; child abuse; self-flagellation; suicide; racism and racial slurs; misogyny; eugenics; death of a parent; animal neglect and death

Aldous Huxley, Author

• Bio: 1894-1963; English writer and philosopher of novels, essays, narratives, and poems; graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature; was a pacifist interested in mysticism and universalism; moved to Hollywood in 1937; applied for US citizenship in 1953 but refused to swear to bear arms for the country, so he withdrew his application; nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times; elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962
• Other Works: Crome Yellow (1921); Eyeless in Gaza (1936); Time Must Have a Stop (1944); The Genius and the Goddess (1955); Island (1962)
• Awards: American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit (1959)