Best Selling Books by Anthony Burgess

Enderby, now called (after his mother) Hogg, is presented in this sequel as a barman in a big London Hotel. Unexpectedly the poetic gift returns. Moreover, Hogg seems to be involved in the assassination of a famous pop-singer, and this forces him to flee, resuming - since it is in his passport - his old identity. He discovers, on a flight to Tangier, that his betrayer Rawcliffe (who stole the plot of a narrative poem and turned it into a horror film) seems to be the patron of beach-cafe in that exotic resort. If Enderby is to put away for mudering a pop-singer, he might as well murder Rawcliffe also.

Revolutionary Sonnets explores themes of violence and love, pretensions and emotion, sex and war and is both sobering and funny.

Hemingway''s great achievement was to free the novel from all the languid decoration and cozy indirectness that was its early twentieth-century inheritance. His terse prose taught the writer to engage life to the fullest in order to write about it, and his own life was the perfect demonstration of that principle. Reissued to coincide with the centenary of Hemingway''s birth, Anthony Burgess''s insightful biography traces the rapidly changing scene from a happy, complacent childhood to the grim reality of the First World War and the vulgar unreality of the Second; from the Paris of the 1920s to the Spain of Civil War and the excitements of African safari to the somber last years in Cuba. Hemingway was rich and successful from an early age, yet public acclaim and even the Nobel Prize could not disguise the fact that he was a moody, suffering, and sometimes vicious figure--a man who was finally unable to live with his own image.

"Burgessian" Rome. Like the locations of many of his novels, Rome here takes on a texture that can only exist in Burgess. The plot concerns Mr. John Beard, a hack writer having a hell of a time (so to speak) in the Eternal City. Full of Nabokovian autoparody (a "better" writer visits Mr. Beard and pounds away at some of Burgess''s own aesthetics) and some fairly relentless lascivity, "Beard''s Roman Women" will be appreciated most by the Burgess-fanatics. --A Customer at Amazon.com.

‘I’m working on a novel intended to express the feel of England in Edward III’s time ... The fourteenth century of my novel will be mainly evoked in terms of smell and visceral feelings, and it will carry an undertone of general disgust rather than hey-nonny nostalgia’ – Anthony Burgess, 1973 The Black Prince is a brutal historical tale of chivalry, religious belief, obsession, siege and bloody warfare. From disorientating depictions of medieval battles to court intrigues and betrayals, the campaigns of Edward, the Black Prince, are brought to vivid life. This rambunctious book, based on a completed screenplay by Anthony Burgess, showcases Adam Roberts in complete control of the novel as a way of making us look at history with fresh eyes, all while staying true to the linguistic pyrotechnics and narrative verve of Burgess’s best work.

A grand and affectionate tragicomic symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte that teases and reweaves Napoleon''s life into a pattern borrowed - in liberty, equality, and fraternity - from Beethoven''s Third "Eroica" Symphony, in this rich, exciting, bawdy, and funny novel Anthony Burgess has pulled out all the stops for a virtuoso performance that is literary, historical, and musical.

The daring dystopian satire that inspired one of the most notorious films ever made, beautifully reimagined as part of the Penguin Essentials series ''Every generation should discover this book'' Time Out ________________ In this nightmare vision of youth in revolt, fifteen-year-old Alex and his friends set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture and murder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the State tries to reform him - but at what cost? Experiment of language? Social prophecy? Black comedy? A Clockwork Orange is all of these. Dazzling and transgressive, this frightening fable about good and evil asks the meaning of human freedom. ________________ ''A gruesomely witty cautionary tale'' Time ''Not only about man''s violent nature and his capacity to choose between good and evil. It is about the excitements and intoxicating effects of language'' Daily Telegraph ''I do not know of any other writer who has done as much with language . . . a very funny book'' William S. Burroughs ''One of the cleverest and most original writers of his generation'' The Times

In this magnificent portrait if Shakespeare''s world, the life of England''s greatest playwright is recreated by one of the great novelists of our day.

Homage to Mozart on the occasion of the bicentennial of his death with celestial dialogue, an opera libretto, fragments of film script, and part rumination on the mystery of music.

A lively attempt to understand the meaning of music through a celestial dialogue with arguably the world''s greatest composer.

Offers a portrait of the author''s first forty years, from his childhood in Manchester to the moment when, having been told he was dying, he began to write seriously

ANNIVERSARY GOLD EDITIONA Clockwork Orange, novel by Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. Set in a dismal dystopia, it is the first-person account of a juvenile delinquent who undergoes state-sponsored psychological rehabilitation for his aberrant behaviour. The novel satirizes extreme political systems that are based on opposing models of the perfectibility or incorrigibility of humanity. Written in a futuristic slang vocabulary invented by Burgess, in part by adaptation of Russian words, it was his most original and best-known work. The film adaptation (1971) by Stanley Kubrick was also widely acclaimed, though not without its critics, especially due to the film''s many violent and sexually explicit scenes.SUMMARY: Burgess'' chilling novel was partly inspired by the seaside fights of the mods and rockers of the early 1960s. It follows the exploits of a gang of particularly violent teenagers--the Droogs--through the eyes of one member, the Beethoven-loving, 15-year-old Alex (he is older in the film version). Their drug-fueled orgies (milk spiked with narcotics is the drug of choice) and acts of robbery, rape, and torture are detailed with enjoyment in Burgess'' made-up slang, Nadsat. When an attempted robbery goes wrong and Alex commits murder, he is caught and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Unable to cope with life behind bars, Alex volunteers to undergo an experimental program called the Ludovico Technique, unaware that it is a brutal form of aversion therapy (conducted by forcing Alex to watch films of Nazi atrocities set to Beethoven''s Ninth Symphony) that will brainwash him into being physically sick if he even thinks about committing a crime.Here lie the main ethical questions in the book: whether it is better for a man to decide to be bad than to be forced to be good, and whether forcibly suppressing Alex''s free will is acceptable. Additionally, does the state have the right to use violence against some individuals in order to protect the majority?After his release from prison, Alex finds that a side-effect of the treatment means that he can no longer bear to listen to Beethoven, which, together with the deprivation of his free will, leads him to attempt suicide by throwing himself out of a window. He is unsuccessful, but his free will returns, and he is free to revel in the idea of violence again. It is at this point that the version of the book published in the U.S., on which Kubrick''s film was based, stops. However, the final chapter of the UK edition holds out hope for Alex''s redemption.More than 40 years after it was written, this story retains its ability to shock, sicken, and stir an audience.