Huxley's dystopian classic is a nightmare vision of the fate of humanity in a post-nuclear world. After a devastating global catastrophe, a group of scientists arrives in a ruined future shaped by fear, ritual and violence. Humanity has survived – but at a terrible cost, and not in any form they recognise. Ape and Essence is Aldous Huxley’s bleak, satirical vision of civilisation after collapse. Fierce, strange and provocative, it confronts the destructive impulses that persist even after the world has ended. BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days