Time Must Have a Stop (Dalkey Essentials)

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.

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.

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.