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Brave New World
- Narrated by: Michael York
- Length: 8 hrs
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Publisher's summary
Originally published in 1932, this outstanding work of literature is more crucial and relevant today than ever before.
“One of the most prophetic dystopian works of the 20th century”—Wall Street Journal
Cloning, feel-good drugs, antiaging programs, and total social control through politics, programming, and media—has Aldous Huxley accurately predicted our future? With a storyteller’s genius, he weaves these ethical controversies in a compelling narrative that dawns in the year 632 AF (After Ford, the deity). When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity.
A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, Brave New World is both a warning to be heeded and thought-provoking yet satisfying entertainment.
Critic reviews
"British actor Michael York's refined and dramatic reading captures both the tone and the spirit of Huxley's masterpiece." (AudioFile)
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No matter how passionate you are about it, writing can be difficult. Whenever you’re struggling with writer’s block, rejection, competition, insecurity, or any of the countless obstacles that wordsmiths encounter daily, it can help to get encouragement from those who have successfully overcome the very same challenges. If you're looking for inspiration to start your next project, these quotes about writing from writers themselves are sure to be welcome reading!
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Published in 1922, Fitzgerald's second novel chronicles the relationship of Anthony Patch, Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete, and his beautiful wife, Gloria, as they await to inherit his grandfather's fortune. A devastating satire of the nouveaux rich and New York's nightlife, of reckless ambition and squandered talent, it is also a shattering portrait of a marriage fueled by alcohol and wasted by wealth. The Beautiful and Damned, Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda in 1930, "was all true."
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i loved it
- By Emily on 01-20-05
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The Voyage Out
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The Voyage Out is Virginia Woolf's haunting tale about a naïve young woman's sea voyage from London to a small resort on the South American coast. In symbolic, lyrical, and intoxicating prose, her outward journey begins to mirror her internal voyage into adulthood as she searches for her personal identity, grapples with love, and learns how to face life intellectually and emotionally. Its wit and exquisiteness, and its profound depth and insight into humanity, will capture the imagination of the listener.
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Lovely
- By Edith on 05-24-19
By: Virginia Woolf
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Nausea (New Directions Paperbook)
- By: Jean-Paul Sartre
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Sartre's greatest novel and existentialism's key text, now introduced by James Wood, and read by the inimitable Edoardo Ballerini. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form, he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation.
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Glad to have existed to enjoy reading this book!
- By mohammed on 08-11-21
By: Jean-Paul Sartre
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Villette
- By: Charlotte Brontë
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 22 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Hailed as Charlotte Brontë’s “finest novel” by Virginia Woolf, Villette is the timeless semi-autobiographical tale of Lucy Snowe. Left with no family and no money, Lucy goes against her own timid nature and travels to the small city of Villette, France, where she becomes a school teacher in Madame Beck’s school for girls. During her stay, she falls in love—twice—and discovers an independent, inner strength rarely seen in women of her time.
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The Divine Ms. Porter delivers as always
- By peachnmario on 03-17-15
By: Charlotte Brontë
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The Willows
- By: Algernon Blackwood
- Narrated by: Nick Sampson
- Length: 2 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Perhaps Blackwood's most celebrated story, The Willows was influenced heavily by his own trips down the Danube River. It tells the story of two campers who pick the wrong place to sleep for the night, a place where another dimension impinges on our own. H.P. Lovecraft considered this the finest supernatural tale in English literature.
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Slowly building dread.
- By Barks Books on 12-19-16
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Island
- By: Aldous Huxley
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In his final novel - which he considered his most important - Aldous Huxley transports us to the remote Pacific island of Pala, where an ideal society has flourished for 120 years. Inevitably, this island of bliss attracts the envy and enmity of the surrounding world. A conspiracy is underway to take over Pala, and events are set in motion when an agent of the conspirators, a newspaperman named Faranby, is shipwrecked there. What Faranby doesn't expect is how his time with the people of Pala will revolutionize all his values and - to his amazement - give him hope.
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A great narration for a great book.
- By AndrewL on 09-21-16
By: Aldous Huxley
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The Crime at Black Dudley
- An Albert Campion Mystery
- By: Margery Allingham
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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When George Abbershaw is invited to Black Dudley Manor for the weekend, he has only one thing on his mind - proposing to Meggie Oliphant. Unfortunately for George, things don't quite go according to plan. A harmless game turns decidedly deadly and suspicions of murder take precedence over matrimony. Trapped in a remote country house with a murderer, George can see no way out. But Albert Campion can.
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I LIKE this narrator quite a lot!!!!
- By Meep on 11-16-13
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Heart of Darkness: A Signature Performance by Kenneth Branagh
- By: Joseph Conrad
- Narrated by: Kenneth Branagh
- Length: 3 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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A Signature Performance: Kenneth Branagh plays this like a campfire ghost story, told by a haunted, slightly insane Marlow.
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Disgusting Revision
- By Long_Schlong_Silver on 09-27-18
By: Joseph Conrad
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The Third Policeman
- By: Flann O'Brien
- Narrated by: Jim Norton
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Flann O'Brien's most popular and surrealistic novel concerns an imaginary, hellish village police force and a local murder.
Weird, satirical, and very funny, its popularity has suddenly increased with the mention of the novel in the TV series Lost.
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Hell is other people's bicycles.
- By Darwin8u on 03-01-15
By: Flann O'Brien
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The Recognitions
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 47 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
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Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
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The critically acclaimed novelist and social critic Aldous Huxley, describes his personal experimentation with the drug mescaline and explores the nature of visionary experience. The title of this classic comes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."
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Brilliant!!!
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Wish I Hadn't Cliff Noted This in High School
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Thirty years ago, ecstasy and torment took hold of John Rivers, shocking him out of "half-baked imbecility into something more nearly resembling the human form." He had an affair with the wife of his mentor, Henry Maartens - a pathbreaking physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize, and a figure of blinding brilliance - bringing the couple to ruin. Now, on Christmas Eve while a small grandson sleeps upstairs, John Rivers is moved to set the record straight about the great man and the radiant, elemental creature he married, who viewed the renowned genius through undazzled eyes.
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Lyrical brilliance.
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With great wit and stunning intellect - drawing on a diverse array of faiths, including Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Christian mysticism, and Islam - Huxley examines the spiritual beliefs of various religious traditions and explains how they are united by a common human yearning to experience the divine. The Perennial Philosophy includes selections from Meister Eckhart, Rumi, and Lao Tzu, as well as the Bhagavad Gita, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Diamond Sutra, and Upanishads, among many others.
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Segments in French
- By franck battelli on 03-29-19
By: Aldous Huxley
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Eyeless in Gaza
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Wonderful book
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It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.
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A Revelation!
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In this intense detective thriller instilled with philosophical, religious, and social commentary, Dostoevsky studies the psychological impact upon a desperate and impoverished student when he murders a despicable pawnbroker, transgressing moral law to ultimately "benefit humanity".
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Wonderful reading, disturbing book
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The Devils of Loudun
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In 1632, an entire convent in the small French village of Loudun was apparently possessed by the devil. After a sensational and celebrated trial, the convent's charismatic priest Urban Grandier - accused of spiritually and sexually seducing the nuns in his charge - was convicted of being in league with Satan. Then he was burned at the stake for witchcraft. A remarkable true story of religious and sexual obsession, The Devils of Loudun is considered by many to be Brave New World author Aldous Huxley's nonfiction masterpiece.
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Strange book strange tale
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Slaughterhouse-Five
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Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
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Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
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Catch-22
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Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy - it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he's assigned, he'll be in violation of Catch-22.
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Stop randomly adding music
- By Kenneth S. Clark on 08-31-18
By: Joseph Heller
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Atlas Shrugged
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- Unabridged
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In a scrap heap within an abandoned factory, the greatest invention in history lies dormant and unused. By what fatal error of judgment has its value gone unrecognized, its brilliant inventor punished rather than rewarded for his efforts? In defense of those greatest of human qualities that have made civilization possible, one man sets out to show what would happen to the world if all the heroes of innovation and industry went on strike.
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Hurt version decidedly superior
- By Mica on 03-24-09
By: Ayn Rand
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Frankenstein
- By: Mary Shelley
- Narrated by: Dan Stevens
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- Unabridged
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Narrator Dan Stevens ( Downton Abbey) presents an uncanny performance of Mary Shelley's timeless gothic novel, an epic battle between man and monster at its greatest literary pitch. In trying to create life, the young student Victor Frankenstein unleashes forces beyond his control, setting into motion a long and tragic chain of events that brings Victor to the very brink of madness. How he tries to destroy his creation, as it destroys everything Victor loves, is a powerful story of love, friendship, scientific hubris, and horror.
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ARE WE ALWAYS TO BE UNHAPPY?
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 01-28-16
By: Mary Shelley
What listeners say about Brave New World
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jefferson
- 10-03-11
“Oh, Ford, Ford Ford, I Wish I Had My Soma!”
Brave New World is a bitterly funny and humorously tragic dystopian novel in which Aldous Huxley satirizes modern civilization’s obsession with consumerism, sensual pleasure, popular culture entertainment, mass production, and eugenics. His far future world limits individual freedom in exchange for communal happiness via mass culture arts like “feelies” (movies with sensual immersion), the state-produced feel-good drug soma, sex-hormone gum, popular sports like “obstacle golf,” and the assembly line chemical manipulation of ova and fetuses so as to decant from their bottles babies perfectly suited for their destined castes and jobs, babies who are then mentally conditioned to become satisfied workers and consumers who believe that everyone belongs to everyone. In a way it’s more horrible than the more obviously brutal and violent repression of individuals by totalitarian systems in dystopias like George Orwell’s 1984, because Huxley’s novel implies that people are happy being mindless cogs in the wheels of economic production as long as they get their entertainments and new goods.
Michael York does a great job reading the novel, his voice oozing satire for the long opening tour of the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, and then modifying in timbre and dialect for the various characters, among them the self-centered brooder Bernard Marx, the budding intellectual poet Helmholtz Howard, the sexy, sensitive, and increasingly confused Lenina Crowne, the spookily understanding Resident World Controller of Western Europe Mustapha Mond, and especially the good-natured, sad, and conflicted Shakespearean quoting “savage” John.
I had never read this classic of dystopian science fiction, so I’m glad to have listened to this excellent audiobook, because it is entertaining and devastating in its depiction of human nature and modern civilization, especially timely in our own brave new Facebook world.
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344 people found this helpful
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- Jon
- 05-02-17
The last few chapters make the book
Slow start with a relatively slow story. The last few chapters make the book and give you a fair bit to chew on. Almost thought I was going to give up on this book but glad I stuck through. You can read other reviews to catch what the book is really about; I'm just providing the info I wish I knew ahead since I was listening for pleasure and made a quick decision to use up credits before they expire.
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3 people found this helpful
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- T Cyr
- 10-13-16
Visionary Look Into The Future Via 1932
The story is well written, the reading is excellent, but this is a very difficult audio book to listen to and follow along. It clips along at a brisk pace and so many new concepts and ideas are introduced in such fresh terms, that it is difficult to comprehend what is actually happening most of the time. I was new to the story and knew very little about it when I began listening. I ended up researching it on Spark Notes to comprehend the plot line and who all the character were. Even then it was difficult to comprehend what was happening at times; certainly one not to be listened to while doing other activities. I think the story must have been so brilliant for it's time, and it is fun to listen to things he visualized for the future, now, and how they have morphed into or away from our current social norm. Loved this aspect of it! It's one I would have to listen to again to fully comprehend the significance of it's brilliance. This one will take some work!
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- Eliott
- 10-27-20
Masterpiece but dreadful Narration.
The book is splendid, but the inclination of the narrator to imagine the characters voices is to my opinion overdone and unnecessary. A grown man imitating women and children's voices is just distracting and add nothing to the book.
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- William F. McCann
- 12-05-17
Dystopian classic hasn't aged well
Aldous Huxley was no science fiction writer. And how work describing a drugged up dystopian future misses the mark in many ways. The core of the story is philosophical, and maybe still relevant ... still, this one is classroom material and little more.
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- Anonymous User
- 12-13-19
Poor audio quality.
Had to turn the volume way up just to be able to listen to the book. Annoying. Michael York was very good.
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- Jim
- 12-01-19
Quite a pneumatic rendition
parts of the book that are broken up by line breaks were difficult to understand but I think all in all it was handled quite well.
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- Tom
- 11-30-19
Such an accurate extrapolation.
Since the overall themes of the book have been part of our worldview my whole life, I had just assumed that I had read it years ago. Wrong.
The current direction of First World Culture being what it is, I thought I would revisit Huxley’s vision, hoping it had missed the mark. It was shocking, no irony intended, to see how many facets of our “Civilization” he foresaw. The eugenics, the drugs, the demand for constant entertainment, the hive thinking. They’re all there in today’s headlines.
Of course, some would point to the hyperbole of some plot points, but the current is there and the occasional Tidal Waves do strike.
Hopefully, there will be a few Savage voices that will have their cries for Human Civilization heard over the Din of American Idol! I know so many of you think you know the book, but read it again. And weep.
Michael York’s narration triples the impact!
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- Micah Balch
- 08-22-19
Similar to 1984 but different
This is the first Aldous Huxley book I’ve read but I don’t plan on it being the last. Huxley has a brilliant and vivid imagination on par with Orwell. The narrator does a very good job, absolutely no complaints.
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- KaTwee
- 10-09-19
Brilliant performance of a timeless classic.
Beautiful narration. An absolute pleasure to listen to. Huxley's prescience has never been more obvious than it is today.
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