Yet he never stopped writing about the book, giving interviews about it, defending it, sometimes disowning it. Later on, Burgess sought to distance himself from Kubrick’s ‘highly coloured and explicit’ film and expressed frustration that he would be remembered for this ‘very minor work’, when there were other novels that he valued more highly. Yet A Clockwork Orange did not reach a mass audience until Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation was released in January 1972. With its prophetic mixture of drugs, music, fashion and juvenile violence, Burgess’s novel developed a countercultural following in the 1960s. It draws on the collections of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, delving into the archives and harnessing different media to tell the story of the novel and its legacy. This resource aims to explore the relevance of A Clockwork Orange, and present valuable information from the archive to anyone interested in learning more about the text. The linguistic originality of the book, and the moral questions it raises, are as relevant now as they ever were. The novel is concerned with the conflict between the individual and the state, the punishment of young criminals, and the possibility or otherwise of redemption. 3) in C, and the opera Blooms of Dublin.‘What’s it going to be then, eh?’ - Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962).Ī Clockwork Orange is Anthony Burgess’s most famous novel and its impact on literary, musical and visual culture has been extensive. He translated and adapted Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus the King, and Carmen for the stage scripted Jesus of Nazareth and Moses the Lawgiver for the screen invented the prehistoric language spoken in Quest for Fire and composed the Sinfoni Melayu, the Symphony (No. He published studies of Joyce, Hemingway, Shakespeare and Lawrence, produced the treatises on linguistics Language Made Plain and A Mouthful of Air, and was a prolific journalist, writing in several languages. His fiction includes the Malayan trilogy (The Long Day Wanes) on the dying days of Britain's empire in the East the Enderby quartet of novels about a poet and his muse Nothing Like the Sun, a recreation of Shakespeare's love-life A Clockwork Orange, an exploration of the nature of evil and Earthly Powers, a panoramic saga of the 20th century. Born in Manchester, he lived for long periods in Southeast Asia, the USA and Mediterranean Europe as well as in England. He was also a librettist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, travel writer, broadcaster, translator, linguist and educationalist. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.Īnthony Burgess was a British novelist, critic and composer.

Anthony a clockwork orange author