Not so far into the future the world has become a single supranational state ruled by a council of World Controllers. Consumerism has replaced religion science has eliminated illness and ageing; the happiness of all is ensured by genetic engineering brainwashing recreational sex and tranquilizing drugs. But Bernard Marx feels alienated from a society in which 'everybody belings to everybody else' and begins to show alarming signs of individualism. When he plucks a Shakespeare reasing 'Savage' from a South American reservation and brings him back to Lodnon two incompatible views of the world come into conflict with dramatic results.