Pala is a tiny (fictitious) island in the Indian Ocean, where it's small community has made the best of western and eastern worlds. The inhabitants are basically Shivaite-Buddhists. They have adopted the western technology but not to the extent that the technology becomes dehumanizing and prevents them being full human beings. They have steered clear of the three pillars of the western prosperity:- armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence. They have of course their tradition of empathy for all the living beings, their respect for the environment, habitat and the practice of their traditional mind science. The Community believes that God is immanent, man is potentially transcendent. The island's enlightened community have attempted the enormous folly of trying to make a marriage between Hell and Heaven and succeeded at it. They have blended their tradition with western technology in a perfect synthesis. Rather, one of their prime credo is making the best of all the worlds.

The book opens in a dramatic fashion. An English journalist on a secret mission to push the Oil interests of his tycoon boss is regaining consciousness an early morning on Pala. He had the previous afternoon procured a boat at the neighboring island (a separate country) and planned to sail into the Pala harbor. Unfortunately, he gets caught in a squall. Instead of sailing into the Pala harbor, he is washed ashore the wrong side of the Island with steep hills to be negotiated to reach habitation. Even as he is descending in the failing light of dusk, negotiating the slippery rain washed rocks, he espies snakes (not necessarily venomous) slithering around. Probably finding live snakes around for the first time in his life, he panics, loses hold and falls. Fortunately for him, this fall to the ground is cushioned by an obstructing tree. Still badly bruised, shaken and utterly terrified he loses consciousness. He regains consciousness the next morning with two Palanese urchins - a ten year old girl and a four year old boy- solicitously looking down upon him. The girl sends off the boy to get help. Meanwhile she feeds the famished journalist with bananas. The journalist is still carrying the phantom images of the slithering snakes though they are no more around. How the ten year old successfully administers therapy to the adult journalist to rid of the snakes crawling in his mind is one of the high points of the novel!

One of the other high points in the novel: - the character Lakshmi, in last dying stages of terminal cancer is treated by her relatives. Death is treated as any other incident in life. It is as if Lakshmi's relatives are seeing her off for a long journey she is undertaking. She is helped in every way to live to the very fullest even as she is dying. Huxley had been deeply influenced by the book 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead' so popular in the west during 1920s & 1930s. This particular episode seems to have been inspired by 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead'.

Huxley concludes the book on somewhat tragic but realistic note. Pala, the tiny oasis of sanity is finally overwhelmed, enveloped by the surrounding insanity


Not a novel - but not a criticism   April 25, 2005
 8 out of 11 found this review helpful

If you came to read a thriller based on the romantic principles of melodrama, walk away now. What you have here is a treatise on a way of living, a progressive book of ideas, a barefaced deciphering of love and the suffering of the human condition. A realistic accumulation of one man's answers to the problems of life and death. Read it with complete sincerity. It will bring light to any fool, and make him wise.


Wisdom   April 25, 2005
 6 out of 7 found this review helpful

A beautiful utopian tale, full of wisdom and insight. A minor issue with the book is that some of the dialog is a little dated,and the first few pages can be hard going, but this is far outweighed by the strength of the ideas. Ensure that you read this book, a work of genius.