One of the greatest prose writers and social commentators of the twentieth century, Aldous Huxley here introduces us to a delightfully cynical, comic, and severe group of artists and intellectuals engaged in the most freethinking and modern kind of talk imaginable. Poetry, occultism, ancestral history, and Italian primitive painting are just a few of the subjects competing for discussion among the amiable cast of eccentrics drawn together at Crome, an intensely English country manor.

When the quirky group has gathered for the house party, Henry Wimbush, the owner and self-appointed historian of the estate, relates Crome's history; apocalypse is prophesied, and a young, sensitive poet suffers from unrequited love. This stunning satire of the fads and fashions of the time is not to be missed.