Time Must Have a Stop

From the author of Brave New World comes the story of Sebastian Barnack, a naive young poet on holiday with his uncle in Florence--where his real education begins.<BR>Against his father's wishes, Sebastian visits his uncle in Italy with the objective of finding formal wear, but stumbles into so much more than a shopping trip. Among other adventures, he embarks upon his first love affair with an older woman; inherits, sells, then steals a Dégas painting; attends a botched séance; and incurs the wrath of the Italian Fascisti. As always with Huxley's fiction, a genuine novel-of-ideas lurks just beneath the satirical surface, as Sebastian's heart is torn between two competing philosophies: the hedonistic materialism embodied by his uncle Eustace and the spiritual wisdom of his uncle Bruno.<BR>The novel that Huxley himself thought was his most successful at "fusing idea with story," Time Must Have a Stop is part of Huxley's lifelong attempt to explore the dilemmas of twentieth-century persons and to create characters who, though ill-equipped to solve those dilemmas, all go stumbling on in their painfully serious comedies.