Aldous Huxley’s
unforgettable tale of a brilliant physicist, his beautiful wife, and the young
man who tears their world apart.

Thirty years ago, ecstasy
and torment took hold of John Rivers, shocking him out of “half-baked
imbecility into something more nearly resembling the human form.” He had an
affair with the wife of his mentor, Henry Maartens—a pathbreaking physicist,
winner of the Nobel Prize, and a figure of blinding brilliance—bringing the
couple to ruin. Now, on Christmas Eve while a small grandson sleeps upstairs,
John Rivers is moved to set the record straight about the great man and the
radiant, elemental creature he married, who viewed the renowned genius through
undazzled eyes.