Antic Hay

Antic Hay is a satirical novel written by Aldous Huxley and first published in 1923.

The story is set in London, where the general situation of the city is disheartening after the First World War . All this is what Huxley criticizes through the novel, focusing on the disillusionment and disenchantment that people felt at that time.

Through the crazy lives of his characters and their stories, the writer will guide us through the protagonist, Theodore Gumbril Jr , a young man who invents the "pneumatic pants" to have more comfort when sitting, symbolizing his desire to find a simple solution to the challenges of life in which they find themselves. Surrounded by a circle of eccentric friends, each struggling with their own existential problems, Gumbril embarks on several love affairs and some very special debates.

Antic Hay is a critical and humorous look at the evolution of post-war society.

"Gumbril, Theodore Gumbril Junior, B.A. Oxon., sat in his oaken stall on the north side of the School Chapel and wondered, as he listened through the uneasy silence of half a thousand schoolboys to the First Lesson, pondered, as he looked up at the vast window opposite, all blue and jaundiced and bloody with nineteenth-century glass, speculated in his rapid and rambling way about the existence and the nature of God."