BNW while not perhaps truly great in a literary sense, is most certainly extraordinary in a prophetic one, and in its way a deeper book than 1984, displaying Huxley's subtler understanding of totalitarian's potential wiles, and also his wry and absurdist sense of humour...the Epsilon Semi-Morons and their newspapers of no more than one syllable comes to mind. Now what could that be lampooning in the modern world? Huxley once described it as perhaps fraudulent to pretend to be a novelist, but that he was more of an essayist who with much pleasure used the novel form to embody his ideas. Having said that though, I think he could write works that are fine works of art, with special mention to Eyeless in Gaza and also Those Barren Leaves.
Anyway to get back on track, BNW Revisited is a work that deserves as wide a readership as its more famous younger brother, and displays Huxley's remarkably incisive, elegant and clear thinking about issues of great importance, which can be broadly grouped together as the ever present threat to man's freedom from those in power. As Huxley wrote, "A democracy is a society dedicated to the proposition that power is often abused, and should be entrusted to officials in limited amounts only." This is especially important now as particularly in modern US and Britain, civil liberties are eroded by centralising governments promising us that these increased powers are for own good. Revisited contains amongst much else very elightening thoughts on propaganda in a supposedly free society. Anyway these two books can hardly be more highly recommended, and despite the heavy subject matter, somehow manage to lighten rather than deaden one's mood and worldview due to the self-evident uplifting sense of Huxley's own self. Those impressed with BNW should probably check out Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov as Huxley said that he gained much of the inspiration from its magnificent book within a book, The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor.
