''Eyeless in Gaza'' is a bestselling novel by

Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxle ...

, first published in 1936. The title is taken from a phrase in

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and politica ...

's ''

Samson Agonistes ''Samson Agonistes'' (from Greek Σαμσών ἀγωνιστής, "Samson the champion") is a tragic closet drama by John Milton. It appeared with the publication of Milton's '' Paradise Regained'' in 1671, as the title page of that volume ...

'': : ... Promise was that I : Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver; :Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him :Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves ... The title of the book, like Milton's poem, recalls the

biblical The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of ...

story of

Samson Samson (; , '' he, Šīmšōn, label= none'', "man of the sun") was the last of the judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Book of Judges (chapters 13 to 16) and one of the last leaders who "judged" Israel before the institution o ...

: he was captured by the

Philistines The Philistines ( he, פְּלִשְׁתִּים, Pəlīštīm; Koine Greek ( LXX): Φυλιστιείμ, romanized: ''Phulistieím'') were an ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan from the 12th century BC until 604 BC, whe ...

, his eyes were burned out and he was taken to Gaza, where he was forced to work at grinding grain in a mill. The chapters of the novel are not ordered chronologically. Huxley's biographer,

Sybille Bedford Sybille Bedford, OBE (16 March 1911 – 17 February 2006) was a German-born English writer of non-fiction and semi-autobiographical fiction books. She was a recipient of the Golden PEN Award. Early life She was born as Sybille Aleid Elsa von ...

, whom Huxley knew personally (they were neighbours in the south of France), claims in her fictional memoir '' Jigsaw'' that two of the novel's characters – Mary Amberley, a drug addict, and her daughter – were partly inspired by Bedford and her mother, who was addicted to

morphine Morphine is a strong opiate that is found naturally in opium, a dark brown resin in poppies ('' Papaver somniferum''). It is mainly used as a pain medication, and is also commonly used recreationally, or to make other illicit opioids. T ...

Plot

The novel focuses on four periods in the life of a socialite named Anthony Beavis between the 1890s (when he is a young boy) and 1936 – but not in chronological order. It describes Beavis's experiences as he goes through school, college and various romantic affairs; the meaninglessness of upper-class life during these times; and Beavis's gradual disillusionment with high society, brought to a head by a friend's suicide. He then begins to seek a source of meaning, and seems to find it when he discovers pacifism and then mysticism.

Critical reception

The English journalist

Simon Heffer Simon James Heffer (born 18 July 1960) is an English historian, journalist, author and political commentator. He has published several biographies and a series of books on the social history of Great Britain from the mid-nineteenth century unti ...

has called the novel Huxley's best book and his only "great novel". According to Heffer, the book both harkens back to Huxley's early satires and links to the more serious and philosophical concerns of his later novels. Formally, the novel uses a

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

stream of consciousness In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver in 1840 in ''First L ...

approach, but based in fact, unlike the novels of

Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born ...

Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel '' In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous ...

and Joyce, whose narrators' memories are unreliable. Heffer writes that the novel explores the tension between wartime and pacifism in a particularly productive way, that Huxley is a "sophisticated, original English man of letters" who deserves a reevaluation, and that this novel is a good place to start. In ''Strictly English'', Heffer's guide to writing clearly, he recommends ''Eyeless in Gaza'' as containing examples of what he considers to be Huxley's masterful use of

parentheses A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...

(both

bracket A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...

s and

dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen ...

es) and of the single dash. The blogger Josh Ronsen has created a table of the novel's events, rearranged in chronological order.

Adaptation

The novel was adapted by Robin Chapman as a BBC mini-series in five episodes, which aired in 1971.

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1936 British novels Novels by Aldous Huxley Chatto & Windus books Nonlinear narrative novels

Plot

Critical reception

Adaptation

References

Further reading

External links