Santi Balmes recommends a "perversely beautiful" book

Barcelona"It blew my mind like no book had ever done before," says Santi Balmes, the singer of Love of Lesbian, referring to Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, which he read when he was 16. He was struck by the fact that in 1931, eight years before the Second World War, the English writer had been able to predict such a distant future with such accuracy (the plot begins in London in 2500 AD). "Only a genius could do that." Balmes explains that the beginning of the novel is devastating and addictive, and that he has not found another book that presented the story in such an interesting way.

Huxley presents the society ofBrave New World through an explanation given by a teacher to some children. Babies are created outside the womb, and machines that allow for differentiation in their development separate them into castes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. The working classes are conditioned from gestation to be able to work and not envy the leaders, but rather to see leadership tasks as a headache. "It's perversely beautiful because, in reality, everyone is happy," says Balmes.

When children sleep, they repeatedly hear statements based on their caste, and this prevents the possibility of revolution because everyone is content wherever they belong. Balmes explains that this exercise of hypnotizing them, along with a drug called soma, means that no one can doubt that they live in an incredible society. He was also surprised that, in the novel, the Alphas and Betas are forced to have sexual relations with each other and the concept of a couple doesn't exist: "The bastard invented the concept of polyamory."

According to Balmes, Huxley doesn't present the book as a critique but as a possibility. He says it's very skillful, and even reaches a point where you believe the proposed organization is ideal for a city: "It's very perverse; you end up abducted by this highly effective system of society," admits the Love of Lesbian singer.