Those Barren Leaves

Mrs. Adwinkle, a socially ambitious and self-professed lover of art, has collected her entourage in an Italian palace, in the hopes of recapturing the glories of the Italian Renaissance. Unfortunately, her guests -- a suffering poet, a popular novelist, an aging sensualist philosopher -- fail to fulfill her expectations. Stripping the houseguests of their pretensions, Huxley reveals the superficiality of the cultural elite, those who dare to posture or feign sophistication.