Antic Hay

Antic Hay is Aldous Huxley’s second novel, published in 1923, a bitter and brilliant satire of London life in the years just after the First World War. Its restless hero, the schoolmaster turned would-be inventor Theodore Gumbril, drifts through a city of artists, cynics, and pleasure-seekers, all of them talking cleverly and reaching for a happiness that keeps slipping away from them. Huxley paints a whole society that has lost its bearings, dancing and joking above a deep sense of emptiness and loss. Funny, cruel, and melancholy by turns, it caught the mood of a disillusioned generation and confirmed Huxley as one of the sharpest young writers of his day. This free PDF and EPUB offers the complete novel.