A choodessny classic, 15 Nov 2008
A Clockwork Orange is a novel written by Anthony Burgess and released in England in 1962. It is now considered to a classic piece of English literature, but was, at the time of release, highly controversial and parts have been banned during different periods of time.
The novel is written in three parts, similar to the music section formation A-B-A. This is a connection to both Burgess's and Alex's love of classical music. Altogether, there are twenty-one chapters, a symbol of Alex growing up at the end of the novel and slowly making changes to becoming an adult. In addition, the title A Clockwork Orange, refers to the cockney slang, "As queer as clockwork orange." The word 'clockwork' is an obvious reference to machines and a less-obvious reference to 'human'. 'Orange' is a reference to the Malay word 'orang', which means 'man', and was inspired by Burgess's stay in Malaysia during World War II.
The narration of the story is in the first-person, by fifteen year-old anti-hero Alex, in a not-so-distant future (apparently, it is set in 1995, as imagined from the 1960s). He narrates the story in a mixture of English and 'nadsat' English-a fragmented, new type of English teenage slang, based on Russian, Polari, Slavic, Cockney rhyming slang and some words made up by Burgess himself.
Alex's nights, and sometimes days, consist of murder and rape. Ironically, he uses classic cultural music, or more specifically, his favourite piece, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, to get ready for his escapades.
However, he later runs in to trouble and is at the mercy of the government, and becomes part of a psychological experiment to 'cure him' of his violent and disturbing behaviour. Burgess questions what real 'goodness' is, and what 'liberalism' is versus 'conformation' in society.

I decided to read A Clockwork Orange as I felt it fitted very well in to our current environment of a lack of morality, violence, rape, crime and overall destruction. I wanted to understand why our society is like it is today, which is similar to the dystopia described in the novel.
Burgess imbued me to believe that it is more important to be an individual than to be controlled to conform to society. Burgess believes that once someone's freedom of choice is deprived, they no longer become human; instead they become a 'machine', something which is worst than death and is most certainly not what God 'intended'. However, in opposition to this, Burgess also outlines that if individuals are left to their own devices, without any law and order, this can be equally dangerous and also destabilises society. He questions his readers on how to "weigh the values and dangers of both individual liberty and state control, and consider how much liberty we're willing to give up for order, and how much order we're willing to give up for liberty."

Although a seemingly straight forward balance of arguments, the ways in which Burgess lifts the novel are extraordinary. Unusually, he uses a teenage anti-hero to demonstrate his arguments, and Alex's childlike yet extremely intellectual wording is persuasive and allows the reader to be sympathetic to him. The use of 'nadsat'-slang jargon used by teenagers, makes the novel futuristic and unreal, giving a certain strange detachment between the reader and the novel, making it almost sci-fi-esque and the crimes distant and somewhat more bearable. Some would argue that these comedic devices undermine the book, as well as make it very individual in terms of written style.
However, ironically, by the 1960s, the violent and disrespectful behaviour demonstrated throughout the novel had already come to light and has increased since. Despite the seemingly large difference between the phonics of 'nadsat' and 'formal English', it is easy to work out what the words mean through context and a few similar phonic sounds. This makes the novel interesting, as 'nadsat' words replace some of the slang used both in the 1960s and now, for example, "horrowshow" is a replacement for 'wicked' or 'sick'.

The use of music is an interesting device, as everyone loves to listen to music to get ready to go out, get up in the morning or whatever other leisure activities they enjoy doing. Readers can relate to Alex's love of listening to music before his nightly and daily activities in a rather abstract manner, where Alex is not getting ready for a normal night out but for a night of massacre, pillage and rape. In addition, the choice of music that Burgess chooses is classic, which is unusual for most teenage hooligans to listen to. It makes Alex almost 'cool', as he is distinctively different from most of the hooligans in his generation, and shows an ironically intellectual mind, despite his thug-like activities. Alex's favourite composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, composed a lot of music associated with the Christian religion, another irony to Alex's seemingly immoral character.

I loved this book, in a rather strange way. Burgess's devices of detachment made some of it funny, particularly Alex's childlike monologues and the novel was descriptive enough to create very vivid and frightening images, but at the same time, it did not fail to make some very serious points questioning the readers on reality, morality, ethics, religion, the idea of individualism and themselves.

Highly individual and very Horrorshow, O My Brothers. , 04 Nov 2008
Anthony Burgess was a literary giant. Despite his wishes, this remains the work for which he is best remembered. Most will know it through the film, with which he had scant involvement but which he defended after Stanley Kubrick became fainthearted. Yet few will have read the novel.

The prose is first person, confessional, in a consistent voice, our narrator the chief protagonist, Alex. The vocabulary is a mixture of English and a language called nadsat, an invented language based primarily on Russian but also German, French, and schoolboy terminology. The idea is you work it out for yourself but around a third of it is not intuitive. (The lazy can use the nadsat dictionary.)

The story is set in a not too distant future, with a terrifyingly bleak and broken down society in the grip of a classic liberal-reactionary struggle. It could well be today if you are a pessimist. The violence and sex is handled adroitly, even imperceptibly, and not at all crudely despite its evident brutality. It translates to screen with rather less subtlety. The scene with two ten year olds would be unfilmable or inflammatory.

The first person narration brings you closer to Alex and somehow you can be both horrified and sympathetic. The treatment he is given is arguably worse than the affliction. It both saves and dooms him, looking after his mind but not his soul. An ironic twist: he can't even read the Bible without feeling sick, and is deprived equally of the means both to offend and to defend. Burgess delivers a very modern parable, shot through with arsenic.

Viddy it carefully, O My Brothers; it's real horrorshow.


Creative and Disturbing, 27 May 2008
This is a fantastic and clever book. It follows in the same vein as Orwell's 1984, but takes things that one step further. The book is narrated by the compelling anti-hero Alex. It is written in the language of the gangs of the streets of this dystopian future place, which now is not so very unlike our own society. Alex hates school and rails against authority, hanging out with his gang of thugs in the Corova Milk Bar, taking drugs, raping girls and enjoying nights of bloody mayhem.

An ill-judged robbery goes hideously wrong and Alex is incarcerated in prison, where he becomes the subject of a new social experiment which claims to reprogramme the brain so that violence is no longer an option. Alex takes us through these events and their aftermath in his peculiarly charming and yet repellent words.

Burgess takes on the big themes of social control, anarchy and free will in this fascinating and brilliant book. If you have read the book you will want to see Kubrick's film, which is also brilliant in a completely different way. If you have seen the film prepare to be wowed by the book. Stick with the language, after a while it becomes easy to read as you become immersed into Alex's world and it's well worth the effort.


Couldn't put it down and surprisingly understood it!, 19 May 2008
This book orginally sat in my boyfriends bathroom for a year because I felt this was going to be a hard book to read. When you look at a page without reading it, what stands out is the large amount of words not in standard english, slang and foreign words. Just glancing in it maybe you'd think this was a foreign language book. However when I had nothing else to read and was 'forced' to read this book, I found it surprisingly easy to read and was delighted by the fact that I didn't have to look in the glossary once.
I loved the way the story panned out, was shocked in a way, that the book was more graphic, more controversial than the film. I also think that one feels more sympathetic to the narrators plight than in the film, I suppose this is uncomfortable for some people.
Uncomfortable or not this is a good book.

Better Than The Film, 08 Apr 2008
Like most people I saw the film before I read the book and I am glad that I have viewed both.
The film is a wonderful `work of art` and the book is a modern day masterpiece.
Anthony Burgess painted a picture of modern society 30 years before `youth culture` was invented.
This book compares with Orwells 1984, Bowies `Diamond Dogs` and `Till Death Us Do Part by Garry Jackson.
My biggest wish is a remake of the film.

A choodessny classic, 15 Nov 2008
A Clockwork Orange is a novel written by Anthony Burgess and released in England in 1962. It is now considered to a classic piece of English literature, but was, at the time of release, highly controversial and parts have been banned during different periods of time.
The novel is written in three parts, similar to the music section formation A-B-A. This is a connection to both Burgess's and Alex's love of classical music. Altogether, there are twenty-one chapters, a symbol of Alex growing up at the end of the novel and slowly making changes to becoming an adult. In addition, the title A Clockwork Orange, refers to the cockney slang, "As queer as clockwork orange." The word 'clockwork' is an obvious reference to machines and a less-obvious reference to 'human'. 'Orange' is a reference to the Malay word 'orang', which means 'man', and was inspired by Burgess's stay in Malaysia during World War II.
The narration of the story is in the first-person, by fifteen year-old anti-hero Alex, in a not-so-distant future (apparently, it is set in 1995, as imagined from the 1960s). He narrates the story in a mixture of English and 'nadsat' English-a fragmented, new type of English teenage slang, based on Russian, Polari, Slavic, Cockney rhyming slang and some words made up by Burgess himself.
Alex's nights, and sometimes days, consist of murder and rape. Ironically, he uses classic cultural music, or more specifically, his favourite piece, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, to get ready for his escapades.
However, he later runs in to trouble and is at the mercy of the government, and becomes part of a psychological experiment to 'cure him' of his violent and disturbing behaviour. Burgess questions what real 'goodness' is, and what 'liberalism' is versus 'conformation' in society.

I decided to read A Clockwork Orange as I felt it fitted very well in to our current environment of a lack of morality, violence, rape, crime and overall destruction. I wanted to understand why our society is like it is today, which is similar to the dystopia described in the novel.
Burgess imbued me to believe that it is more important to be an individual than to be controlled to conform to society. Burgess believes that once someone's freedom of choice is deprived, they no longer become human; instead they become a 'machine', something which is worst than death and is most certainly not what God 'intended'. However, in opposition to this, Burgess also outlines that if individuals are left to their own devices, without any law and order, this can be equally dangerous and also destabilises society. He questions his readers on how to "weigh the values and dangers of both individual liberty and state control, and consider how much liberty we're willing to give up for order, and how much order we're willing to give up for liberty."

Although a seemingly straight forward balance of arguments, the ways in which Burgess lifts the novel are extraordinary. Unusually, he uses a teenage anti-hero to demonstrate his arguments, and Alex's childlike yet extremely intellectual wording is persuasive and allows the reader to be sympathetic to him. The use of 'nadsat'-slang jargon used by teenagers, makes the novel futuristic and unreal, giving a certain strange detachment between the reader and the novel, making it almost sci-fi-esque and the crimes distant and somewhat more bearable. Some would argue that these comedic devices undermine the book, as well as make it very individual in terms of written style.
However, ironically, by the 1960s, the violent and disrespectful behaviour demonstrated throughout the novel had already come to light and has increased since. Despite the seemingly large difference between the phonics of 'nadsat' and 'formal English', it is easy to work out what the words mean through context and a few similar phonic sounds. This makes the novel interesting, as 'nadsat' words replace some of the slang used both in the 1960s and now, for example, "horrowshow" is a replacement for 'wicked' or 'sick'.

The use of music is an interesting device, as everyone loves to listen to music to get ready to go out, get up in the morning or whatever other leisure activities they enjoy doing. Readers can relate to Alex's love of listening to music before his nightly and daily activities in a rather abstract manner, where Alex is not getting ready for a normal night out but for a night of massacre, pillage and rape. In addition, the choice of music that Burgess chooses is classic, which is unusual for most teenage hooligans to listen to. It makes Alex almost 'cool', as he is distinctively different from most of the hooligans in his generation, and shows an ironically intellectual mind, despite his thug-like activities. Alex's favourite composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, composed a lot of music associated with the Christian religion, another irony to Alex's seemingly immoral character.

I loved this book, in a rather strange way. Burgess's devices of detachment made some of it funny, particularly Alex's childlike monologues and the novel was descriptive enough to create very vivid and frightening images, but at the same time, it did not fail to make some very serious points questioning the readers on reality, morality, ethics, religion, the idea of individualism and themselves.

Highly individual and very Horrorshow, O My Brothers. , 04 Nov 2008
Anthony Burgess was a literary giant. Despite his wishes, this remains the work for which he is best remembered. Most will know it through the film, with which he had scant involvement but which he defended after Stanley Kubrick became fainthearted. Yet few will have read the novel.

The prose is first person, confessional, in a consistent voice, our narrator the chief protagonist, Alex. The vocabulary is a mixture of English and a language called nadsat, an invented language based primarily on Russian but also German, French, and schoolboy terminology. The idea is you work it out for yourself but around a third of it is not intuitive. (The lazy can use the nadsat dictionary.)

The story is set in a not too distant future, with a terrifyingly bleak and broken down society in the grip of a classic liberal-reactionary struggle. It could well be today if you are a pessimist. The violence and sex is handled adroitly, even imperceptibly, and not at all crudely despite its evident brutality. It translates to screen with rather less subtlety. The scene with two ten year olds would be unfilmable or inflammatory.

The first person narration brings you closer to Alex and somehow you can be both horrified and sympathetic. The treatment he is given is arguably worse than the affliction. It both saves and dooms him, looking after his mind but not his soul. An ironic twist: he can't even read the Bible without feeling sick, and is deprived equally of the means both to offend and to defend. Burgess delivers a very modern parable, shot through with arsenic.

Viddy it carefully, O My Brothers; it's real horrorshow.


Creative and Disturbing, 27 May 2008
This is a fantastic and clever book. It follows in the same vein as Orwell's 1984, but takes things that one step further. The book is narrated by the compelling anti-hero Alex. It is written in the language of the gangs of the streets of this dystopian future place, which now is not so very unlike our own society. Alex hates school and rails against authority, hanging out with his gang of thugs in the Corova Milk Bar, taking drugs, raping girls and enjoying nights of bloody mayhem.

An ill-judged robbery goes hideously wrong and Alex is incarcerated in prison, where he becomes the subject of a new social experiment which claims to reprogramme the brain so that violence is no longer an option. Alex takes us through these events and their aftermath in his peculiarly charming and yet repellent words.

Burgess takes on the big themes of social control, anarchy and free will in this fascinating and brilliant book. If you have read the book you will want to see Kubrick's film, which is also brilliant in a completely different way. If you have seen the film prepare to be wowed by the book. Stick with the language, after a while it becomes easy to read as you become immersed into Alex's world and it's well worth the effort.


Couldn't put it down and surprisingly understood it!, 19 May 2008
This book orginally sat in my boyfriends bathroom for a year because I felt this was going to be a hard book to read. When you look at a page without reading it, what stands out is the large amount of words not in standard english, slang and foreign words. Just glancing in it maybe you'd think this was a foreign language book. However when I had nothing else to read and was 'forced' to read this book, I found it surprisingly easy to read and was delighted by the fact that I didn't have to look in the glossary once.
I loved the way the story panned out, was shocked in a way, that the book was more graphic, more controversial than the film. I also think that one feels more sympathetic to the narrators plight than in the film, I suppose this is uncomfortable for some people.
Uncomfortable or not this is a good book.

Better Than The Film, 08 Apr 2008
Like most people I saw the film before I read the book and I am glad that I have viewed both.
The film is a wonderful `work of art` and the book is a modern day masterpiece.
Anthony Burgess painted a picture of modern society 30 years before `youth culture` was invented.
This book compares with Orwells 1984, Bowies `Diamond Dogs` and `Till Death Us Do Part by Garry Jackson.
My biggest wish is a remake of the film.



Must Read..., 31 Oct 2006
Written with relentless honesty and ferociousness, boldly questioning choice and morality. The film would not have been the same if it was ended with the excluded final chapter of the book; an ending I will not spoil.

This reading should be mandatory reading because the book opens the readers eye to mans will to dominate (or force the eye open if you will), and the nature of the beast. It amazes me how this book was written more than four decades ago. How much of Burgess' fiction became reality? Too much.

If you like deciphering fiction the Nadsat language is hilarious and disturbingly childlike. Apparently, Burgess hated the movie. It is clear why he hated the movie, even though the visual representation was spot on.



A Clockwork Orange, 05 Jun 2006
A Clockwork Orange is a very good book in terms of credibility and originality. I saw the movie before I read the book, and straight after I viewed the film, I needed to read the book because I don't understood everything.
When I started reading this book I was startled by the strange language it's written in, the principal person Alex, who narrates the story speaks in his own lingo all the way through the novel and that makes the book difficult in the begin.
For me has Anthony Burgess written this very well and drugs, graphic violence & torture are just some of the things included in this novel, but for me is this absolutely the best English book I have ever read.
But it is very hard to read in parts, because of the language. I would give it a 8 on 10.


Ultra-fab, a must read, 29 Apr 2006
I am studying 'A Clockwork Orange' for my degree and it has become my favourite book. We view 15 year old Alex's life through his eyes and despite being shocked by his tales of rape and violence, Burgess manages to give Alex a likeable edge and I found myself laughing at the black humour in the novel, then instantly feeling uneasy that I was finding rape humourous. But, I realised that it is not the controversial issues in the book that are portrayed as amusing, it is the absurd way that ultra-violence is contrasted with something as innocent and pure as beethoven's ninth. Alex is not a straight-forward character, there is depth and culture amongst the inhuman brutality and this is what makes the book interesting. The best aspect of the book for me is the language Nadsat. The language baffled me at first, but by the end of the book I was reading it as easily as English.

Definately read this book! I have seen the film and enjoyed it, but I found that the humour of the book was lost in the film and the violence seemed to take over. Try and read the book before you see the film, that worked for me.

In short: WOW!, 07 Aug 2005
It's been quite a while since a book has impressed me so much. I didn't want to read it at first - it is, alongside Kubrick's film, infamous for its depiction of violence and brutality. Not really my sort of thing. But I picked it up idly one day and when I started reading, found I couldn't stop!

The novel is set in a strange, dystopian future and focusses on the character of Alex, its 15 year old anti-hero, who spends his free time indulging in ultra-violence, theft, rape and listening ecstatically to classical music. What's amazing about the novel is that Burgess gradually manages to make the reader become so sympathetic to him throughout the book - Alex is bright, witty, defiant; openly confiding his thoughts and feelings to his audience - his "brothers". When the state fiinally catches up with him, locks him, and then starts altering him with the morally dodgy "Ludovico Technique" one can't help but side with him against his 'doctors'.

Part of the book's genius is the fact it's written so beautifully and laid out. Burgess's surreal use of language is incredibly ingenious. He creates the wonderful 'nadsat' slang spoken by Alex and his friends (or 'droogs') through a combination of Russian and different styles of English. As a student of Russian, part of the fun was deciphering the words and sentences, working out the book and storyline as I went along. If at first the book doesn't make sense then just persevere - gradually things will become more coherant and the language suddenly gells and makes sense.

Ultimately, this thought-provoking novel left me with lots to muse about. Questions on morality, society and, most importantly, an individual's free choice are brought up and it's left with the reader to ultimately decide what s/he thinks. The book jacket described this novel as 'one that every generation should read'. I really couldn't agree more!

Tricky, 05 Feb 2005
The kind of book you hear about, the kind of book you believe you really ought to make sure you have read. No problem with that.

However, for many people this book will present itself as very difficult to get a grasp of, it its tricky to make it flow and its certainly not the kind of book to read at night with tired eyes.

Readers of classics will undoubtedly be more suited to getting the most out of this as they will be more adept at drawing out the meaning of the language. The younger reader may well find difficulty in turning the Russian, English and plain invented language into the story.

I enjoyed it, as a read, though the story is hard to enjoy. Its dark and deep and it in no way hides these facts. Its a story that stands out there tall and proud and shouts "Read me if you dare, seek me if you are foolish".

I wont go into the story, as I believe other reviewers have done a fine job.

All that is left to say is that, despite seeming that way, there was no chance this would have a happy ending, too much had gone before and too many things stick in the mind to close on a high note.

An important piece of writing.

A choodessny classic, 15 Nov 2008
A Clockwork Orange is a novel written by Anthony Burgess and released in England in 1962. It is now considered to a classic piece of English literature, but was, at the time of release, highly controversial and parts have been banned during different periods of time.
The novel is written in three parts, similar to the music section formation A-B-A. This is a connection to both Burgess's and Alex's love of classical music. Altogether, there are twenty-one chapters, a symbol of Alex growing up at the end of the novel and slowly making changes to becoming an adult. In addition, the title A Clockwork Orange, refers to the cockney slang, "As queer as clockwork orange." The word 'clockwork' is an obvious reference to machines and a less-obvious reference to 'human'. 'Orange' is a reference to the Malay word 'orang', which means 'man', and was inspired by Burgess's stay in Malaysia during World War II.
The narration of the story is in the first-person, by fifteen year-old anti-hero Alex, in a not-so-distant future (apparently, it is set in 1995, as imagined from the 1960s). He narrates the story in a mixture of English and 'nadsat' English-a fragmented, new type of English teenage slang, based on Russian, Polari, Slavic, Cockney rhyming slang and some words made up by Burgess himself.
Alex's nights, and sometimes days, consist of murder and rape. Ironically, he uses classic cultural music, or more specifically, his favourite piece, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, to get ready for his escapades.
However, he later runs in to trouble and is at the mercy of the government, and becomes part of a psychological experiment to 'cure him' of his violent and disturbing behaviour. Burgess questions what real 'goodness' is, and what 'liberalism' is versus 'conformation' in society.

I decided to read A Clockwork Orange as I felt it fitted very well in to our current environment of a lack of morality, violence, rape, crime and overall destruction. I wanted to understand why our society is like it is today, which is similar to the dystopia described in the novel.
Burgess imbued me to believe that it is more important to be an individual than to be controlled to conform to society. Burgess believes that once someone's freedom of choice is deprived, they no longer become human; instead they become a 'machine', something which is worst than death and is most certainly not what God 'intended'. However, in opposition to this, Burgess also outlines that if individuals are left to their own devices, without any law and order, this can be equally dangerous and also destabilises society. He questions his readers on how to "weigh the values and dangers of both individual liberty and state control, and consider how much liberty we're willing to give up for order, and how much order we're willing to give up for liberty."

Although a seemingly straight forward balance of arguments, the ways in which Burgess lifts the novel are extraordinary. Unusually, he uses a teenage anti-hero to demonstrate his arguments, and Alex's childlike yet extremely intellectual wording is persuasive and allows the reader to be sympathetic to him. The use of 'nadsat'-slang jargon used by teenagers, makes the novel futuristic and unreal, giving a certain strange detachment between the reader and the novel, making it almost sci-fi-esque and the crimes distant and somewhat more bearable. Some would argue that these comedic devices undermine the book, as well as make it very individual in terms of written style.
However, ironically, by the 1960s, the violent and disrespectful behaviour demonstrated throughout the novel had already come to light and has increased since. Despite the seemingly large difference between the phonics of 'nadsat' and 'formal English', it is easy to work out what the words mean through context and a few similar phonic sounds. This makes the novel interesting, as 'nadsat' words replace some of the slang used both in the 1960s and now, for example, "horrowshow" is a replacement for 'wicked' or 'sick'.

The use of music is an interesting device, as everyone loves to listen to music to get ready to go out, get up in the morning or whatever other leisure activities they enjoy doing. Readers can relate to Alex's love of listening to music before his nightly and daily activities in a rather abstract manner, where Alex is not getting ready for a normal night out but for a night of massacre, pillage and rape. In addition, the choice of music that Burgess chooses is classic, which is unusual for most teenage hooligans to listen to. It makes Alex almost 'cool', as he is distinctively different from most of the hooligans in his generation, and shows an ironically intellectual mind, despite his thug-like activities. Alex's favourite composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, composed a lot of music associated with the Christian religion, another irony to Alex's seemingly immoral character.

I loved this book, in a rather strange way. Burgess's devices of detachment made some of it funny, particularly Alex's childlike monologues and the novel was descriptive enough to create very vivid and frightening images, but at the same time, it did not fail to make some very serious points questioning the readers on reality, morality, ethics, religion, the idea of individualism and themselves.

Highly individual and very Horrorshow, O My Brothers. , 04 Nov 2008
Anthony Burgess was a literary giant. Despite his wishes, this remains the work for which he is best remembered. Most will know it through the film, with which he had scant involvement but which he defended after Stanley Kubrick became fainthearted. Yet few will have read the novel.

The prose is first person, confessional, in a consistent voice, our narrator the chief protagonist, Alex. The vocabulary is a mixture of English and a language called nadsat, an invented language based primarily on Russian but also German, French, and schoolboy terminology. The idea is you work it out for yourself but around a third of it is not intuitive. (The lazy can use the nadsat dictionary.)

The story is set in a not too distant future, with a terrifyingly bleak and broken down society in the grip of a classic liberal-reactionary struggle. It could well be today if you are a pessimist. The violence and sex is handled adroitly, even imperceptibly, and not at all crudely despite its evident brutality. It translates to screen with rather less subtlety. The scene with two ten year olds would be unfilmable or inflammatory.

The first person narration brings you closer to Alex and somehow you can be both horrified and sympathetic. The treatment he is given is arguably worse than the affliction. It both saves and dooms him, looking after his mind but not his soul. An ironic twist: he can't even read the Bible without feeling sick, and is deprived equally of the means both to offend and to defend. Burgess delivers a very modern parable, shot through with arsenic.

Viddy it carefully, O My Brothers; it's real horrorshow.


Creative and Disturbing, 27 May 2008
This is a fantastic and clever book. It follows in the same vein as Orwell's 1984, but takes things that one step further. The book is narrated by the compelling anti-hero Alex. It is written in the language of the gangs of the streets of this dystopian future place, which now is not so very unlike our own society. Alex hates school and rails against authority, hanging out with his gang of thugs in the Corova Milk Bar, taking drugs, raping girls and enjoying nights of bloody mayhem.

An ill-judged robbery goes hideously wrong and Alex is incarcerated in prison, where he becomes the subject of a new social experiment which claims to reprogramme the brain so that violence is no longer an option. Alex takes us through these events and their aftermath in his peculiarly charming and yet repellent words.

Burgess takes on the big themes of social control, anarchy and free will in this fascinating and brilliant book. If you have read the book you will want to see Kubrick's film, which is also brilliant in a completely different way. If you have seen the film prepare to be wowed by the book. Stick with the language, after a while it becomes easy to read as you become immersed into Alex's world and it's well worth the effort.


Couldn't put it down and surprisingly understood it!, 19 May 2008
This book orginally sat in my boyfriends bathroom for a year because I felt this was going to be a hard book to read. When you look at a page without reading it, what stands out is the large amount of words not in standard english, slang and foreign words. Just glancing in it maybe you'd think this was a foreign language book. However when I had nothing else to read and was 'forced' to read this book, I found it surprisingly easy to read and was delighted by the fact that I didn't have to look in the glossary once.
I loved the way the story panned out, was shocked in a way, that the book was more graphic, more controversial than the film. I also think that one feels more sympathetic to the narrators plight than in the film, I suppose this is uncomfortable for some people.
Uncomfortable or not this is a good book.

Better Than The Film, 08 Apr 2008
Like most people I saw the film before I read the book and I am glad that I have viewed both.
The film is a wonderful `work of art` and the book is a modern day masterpiece.
Anthony Burgess painted a picture of modern society 30 years before `youth culture` was invented.
This book compares with Orwells 1984, Bowies `Diamond Dogs` and `Till Death Us Do Part by Garry Jackson.
My biggest wish is a remake of the film.



Must Read..., 31 Oct 2006
Written with relentless honesty and ferociousness, boldly questioning choice and morality. The film would not have been the same if it was ended with the excluded final chapter of the book; an ending I will not spoil.

This reading should be mandatory reading because the book opens the readers eye to mans will to dominate (or force the eye open if you will), and the nature of the beast. It amazes me how this book was written more than four decades ago. How much of Burgess' fiction became reality? Too much.

If you like deciphering fiction the Nadsat language is hilarious and disturbingly childlike. Apparently, Burgess hated the movie. It is clear why he hated the movie, even though the visual representation was spot on.



A Clockwork Orange, 05 Jun 2006
A Clockwork Orange is a very good book in terms of credibility and originality. I saw the movie before I read the book, and straight after I viewed the film, I needed to read the book because I don't understood everything.
When I started reading this book I was startled by the strange language it's written in, the principal person Alex, who narrates the story speaks in his own lingo all the way through the novel and that makes the book difficult in the begin.
For me has Anthony Burgess written this very well and drugs, graphic violence & torture are just some of the things included in this novel, but for me is this absolutely the best English book I have ever read.
But it is very hard to read in parts, because of the language. I would give it a 8 on 10.


Ultra-fab, a must read, 29 Apr 2006
I am studying 'A Clockwork Orange' for my degree and it has become my favourite book. We view 15 year old Alex's life through his eyes and despite being shocked by his tales of rape and violence, Burgess manages to give Alex a likeable edge and I found myself laughing at the black humour in the novel, then instantly feeling uneasy that I was finding rape humourous. But, I realised that it is not the controversial issues in the book that are portrayed as amusing, it is the absurd way that ultra-violence is contrasted with something as innocent and pure as beethoven's ninth. Alex is not a straight-forward character, there is depth and culture amongst the inhuman brutality and this is what makes the book interesting. The best aspect of the book for me is the language Nadsat. The language baffled me at first, but by the end of the book I was reading it as easily as English.

Definately read this book! I have seen the film and enjoyed it, but I found that the humour of the book was lost in the film and the violence seemed to take over. Try and read the book before you see the film, that worked for me.

In short: WOW!, 07 Aug 2005
It's been quite a while since a book has impressed me so much. I didn't want to read it at first - it is, alongside Kubrick's film, infamous for its depiction of violence and brutality. Not really my sort of thing. But I picked it up idly one day and when I started reading, found I couldn't stop!

The novel is set in a strange, dystopian future and focusses on the character of Alex, its 15 year old anti-hero, who spends his free time indulging in ultra-violence, theft, rape and listening ecstatically to classical music. What's amazing about the novel is that Burgess gradually manages to make the reader become so sympathetic to him throughout the book - Alex is bright, witty, defiant; openly confiding his thoughts and feelings to his audience - his "brothers". When the state fiinally catches up with him, locks him, and then starts altering him with the morally dodgy "Ludovico Technique" one can't help but side with him against his 'doctors'.

Part of the book's genius is the fact it's written so beautifully and laid out. Burgess's surreal use of language is incredibly ingenious. He creates the wonderful 'nadsat' slang spoken by Alex and his friends (or 'droogs') through a combination of Russian and different styles of English. As a student of Russian, part of the fun was deciphering the words and sentences, working out the book and storyline as I went along. If at first the book doesn't make sense then just persevere - gradually things will become more coherant and the language suddenly gells and makes sense.

Ultimately, this thought-provoking novel left me with lots to muse about. Questions on morality, society and, most importantly, an individual's free choice are brought up and it's left with the reader to ultimately decide what s/he thinks. The book jacket described this novel as 'one that every generation should read'. I really couldn't agree more!

Tricky, 05 Feb 2005
The kind of book you hear about, the kind of book you believe you really ought to make sure you have read. No problem with that.

However, for many people this book will present itself as very difficult to get a grasp of, it its tricky to make it flow and its certainly not the kind of book to read at night with tired eyes.

Readers of classics will undoubtedly be more suited to getting the most out of this as they will be more adept at drawing out the meaning of the language. The younger reader may well find difficulty in turning the Russian, English and plain invented language into the story.

I enjoyed it, as a read, though the story is hard to enjoy. Its dark and deep and it in no way hides these facts. Its a story that stands out there tall and proud and shouts "Read me if you dare, seek me if you are foolish".

I wont go into the story, as I believe other reviewers have done a fine job.

All that is left to say is that, despite seeming that way, there was no chance this would have a happy ending, too much had gone before and too many things stick in the mind to close on a high note.

An important piece of writing.

The Perfect Novel, 23 Sep 2008
I remember picking this up and getting a feeling of joy bubbling through me when I read the first line and found that I already liked Kenneth Toomey as he explained his thinking behind the first line a little way down the page. I think I was even more surprised that it didn't come across as clever-clever, elitist or smug - it just came over as intelligent, funny, humane writing.

I'm currently reading this for the second time in the space of a year, something I thought I'd long outgrown. This is a book that glories in literary heritage, in theological debate, and in the politics of sexuality, religion and art. Above all, Burgess glories in taking the time to construct a beautifully believable, human hero and peoples the novel with characters both real and imagined (although even the real ones are imagined).

I am a voracious, constant reader and Earthly Powers is my reward - it is the reward for any serious reader. A page turner that is also a great work of art. In my opinion, it's the perfect novel.



garlicky, 13 Aug 2008
garlicky puns???omnilingual jokes!!! top hole old boy...

the best sleeping pill I have ever used...a great cure for insomnia..

like 'young turk' amis, 'contrarian' hitchens, 'beaker' mcewan, 'chuckle chuckle..i'm a devilishly humorous fellow' rushdie - this mindless bore saw himself as high above the qoutidian by virtue of being a writer..another useless english novelist full of his own worth...hits the bulleye once or twice in what ? 37 books is it ?




Religion/Power, 12 Aug 2008
4.7 or 4.8 stars. A remarkable parody of that greatest of cliches - the self-indulgent reflections of a writer. But this is happily more than a conceptual joke. The language is sublime, the moments of brutality a punch in the crotch, the politics of religion masterful, the hero-author dynamic suitably ambiguous, the homosexual caricatures a little overblown but the wit laugh-out-loud. Seek it out.

Response from an Ordinary Person, 18 Jan 2008
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess

A tour de force by an erudite and fluent author; he has structured a framework of individual lives and relationships within which he has opened to examination some of the fundamental contradictions of Catholicism and Christian religion. If God is all seeing and knowing how can he permit such horrors? If he gave all his creation free will then how is it no-one feels free? But these comments just touch the surface of a momentous work. Then I also found it self indulgent and exclusive. Exclusive? because I think he wrote this as much for himself and a small coterie of scholars as any ordinary reader such as myself. I believe I am well read and reasonably literate, but I often stopped at words that I had never come across before, so I wrote them down in a little note book to check their meaning later. This disturbed the rhythm of the text for me and I think such boasting of vocabulary unnecessary. Also his passages on a continent -Africa - I think he has never visited (apart from North Africa - the Muslim Territories) - were wholly unreal and naïve, and for me an uncalled for diversion. Finally; I tried to imagine the effort it must take to create such a work, and can only respond with awe and respect at the energy, talent, scholarship and breadth of knowledge Mr Burgess was able to bring to paper. This is a work that will last in my memory and demand I revisit.


Vivid, evocative, brilliant!, 23 Sep 2007
This, like the Alexandria Quartet, is a book that I initially started reading and stopped again, pretty quickly. Having learnt the error of my ways from re-reading and greatly enjoying the aforementioned AQ, I decided to give this another go and am so glad that I did.

Hard to describe but epic in scope, this book is the personal history of its narrator, Kenneth Toomey, a popular author, playwright and librettist, which also tells the story of a miracle-working (fictional) pope, his relation by marriage. Encompassing the greater part of the twentieth century, and mixing events real and invented, it makes compelling reading, enhanced by the author's vivid style and wickedly funny narrative voice. Well worth persevering with.

A choodessny classic, 15 Nov 2008
A Clockwork Orange is a novel written by Anthony Burgess and released in England in 1962. It is now considered to a classic piece of English literature, but was, at the time of release, highly controversial and parts have been banned during different periods of time.
The novel is written in three parts, similar to the music section formation A-B-A. This is a connection to both Burgess's and Alex's love of classical music. Altogether, there are twenty-one chapters, a symbol of Alex growing up at the end of the novel and slowly making changes to becoming an adult. In addition, the title A Clockwork Orange, refers to the cockney slang, "As queer as clockwork orange." The word 'clockwork' is an obvious reference to machines and a less-obvious reference to 'human'. 'Orange' is a reference to the Malay word 'orang', which means 'man', and was inspired by Burgess's stay in Malaysia during World War II.
The narration of the story is in the first-person, by fifteen year-old anti-hero Alex, in a not-so-distant future (apparently, it is set in 1995, as imagined from the 1960s). He narrates the story in a mixture of English and 'nadsat' English-a fragmented, new type of English teenage slang, based on Russian, Polari, Slavic, Cockney rhyming slang and some words made up by Burgess himself.
Alex's nights, and sometimes days, consist of murder and rape. Ironically, he uses classic cultural music, or more specifically, his favourite piece, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, to get ready for his escapades.
However, he later runs in to trouble and is at the mercy of the government, and becomes part of a psychological experiment to 'cure him' of his violent and disturbing behaviour. Burgess questions what real 'goodness' is, and what 'liberalism' is versus 'conformation' in society.

I decided to read A Clockwork Orange as I felt it fitted very well in to our current environment of a lack of morality, violence, rape, crime and overall destruction. I wanted to understand why our society is like it is today, which is similar to the dystopia described in the novel.
Burgess imbued me to believe that it is more important to be an individual than to be controlled to conform to society. Burgess believes that once someone's freedom of choice is deprived, they no longer become human; instead they become a 'machine', something which is worst than death and is most certainly not what God 'intended'. However, in opposition to this, Burgess also outlines that if individuals are left to their own devices, without any law and order, this can be equally dangerous and also destabilises society. He questions his readers on how to "weigh the values and dangers of both individual liberty and state control, and consider how much liberty we're willing to give up for order, and how much order we're willing to give up for liberty."

Although a seemingly straight forward balance of arguments, the ways in which Burgess lifts the novel are extraordinary. Unusually, he uses a teenage anti-hero to demonstrate his arguments, and Alex's childlike yet extremely intellectual wording is persuasive and allows the reader to be sympathetic to him. The use of 'nadsat'-slang jargon used by teenagers, makes the novel futuristic and unreal, giving a certain strange detachment between the reader and the novel, making it almost sci-fi-esque and the crimes distant and somewhat more bearable. Some would argue that these comedic devices undermine the book, as well as make it very individual in terms of written style.
However, ironically, by the 1960s, the violent and disrespectful behaviour demonstrated throughout the novel had already come to light and has increased since. Despite the seemingly large difference between the phonics of 'nadsat' and 'formal English', it is easy to work out what the words mean through context and a few similar phonic sounds. This makes the novel interesting, as 'nadsat' words replace some of the slang used both in the 1960s and now, for example, "horrowshow" is a replacement for 'wicked' or 'sick'.

The use of music is an interesting device, as everyone loves to listen to music to get ready to go out, get up in the morning or whatever other leisure activities they enjoy doing. Readers can relate to Alex's love of listening to music before his nightly and daily activities in a rather abstract manner, where Alex is not getting ready for a normal night out but for a night of massacre, pillage and rape. In addition, the choice of music that Burgess chooses is classic, which is unusual for most teenage hooligans to listen to. It makes Alex almost 'cool', as he is distinctively different from most of the hooligans in his generation, and shows an ironically intellectual mind, despite his thug-like activities. Alex's favourite composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, composed a lot of music associated with the Christian religion, another irony to Alex's seemingly immoral character.

I loved this book, in a rather strange way. Burgess's devices of detachment made some of it funny, particularly Alex's childlike monologues and the novel was descriptive enough to create very vivid and frightening images, but at the same time, it did not fail to make some very serious points questioning the readers on reality, morality, ethics, religion, the idea of individualism and themselves.

Highly individual and very Horrorshow, O My Brothers. , 04 Nov 2008
Anthony Burgess was a literary giant. Despite his wishes, this remains the work for which he is best remembered. Most will know it through the film, with which he had scant involvement but which he defended after Stanley Kubrick became fainthearted. Yet few will have read the novel.

The prose is first person, confessional, in a consistent voice, our narrator the chief protagonist, Alex. The vocabulary is a mixture of English and a language called nadsat, an invented language based primarily on Russian but also German, French, and schoolboy terminology. The idea is you work it out for yourself but around a third of it is not intuitive. (The lazy can use the nadsat dictionary.)

The story is set in a not too distant future, with a terrifyingly bleak and broken down society in the grip of a classic liberal-reactionary struggle. It could well be today if you are a pessimist. The violence and sex is handled adroitly, even imperceptibly, and not at all crudely despite its evident brutality. It translates to screen with rather less subtlety. The scene with two ten year olds would be unfilmable or inflammatory.

The first person narration brings you closer to Alex and somehow you can be both horrified and sympathetic. The treatment he is given is arguably worse than the affliction. It both saves and dooms him, looking after his mind but not his soul. An ironic twist: he can't even read the Bible without feeling sick, and is deprived equally of the means both to offend and to defend. Burgess delivers a very modern parable, shot through with arsenic.

Viddy it carefully, O My Brothers; it's real horrorshow.


Creative and Disturbing, 27 May 2008
This is a fantastic and clever book. It follows in the same vein as Orwell's 1984, but takes things that one step further. The book is narrated by the compelling anti-hero Alex. It is written in the language of the gangs of the streets of this dystopian future place, which now is not so very unlike our own society. Alex hates school and rails against authority, hanging out with his gang of thugs in the Corova Milk Bar, taking drugs, raping girls and enjoying nights of bloody mayhem.

An ill-judged robbery goes hideously wrong and Alex is incarcerated in prison, where he becomes the subject of a new social experiment which claims to reprogramme the brain so that violence is no longer an option. Alex takes us through these events and their aftermath in his peculiarly charming and yet repellent words.

Burgess takes on the big themes of social control, anarchy and free will in this fascinating and brilliant book. If you have read the book you will want to see Kubrick's film, which is also brilliant in a completely different way. If you have seen the film prepare to be wowed by the book. Stick with the language, after a while it becomes easy to read as you become immersed into Alex's world and it's well worth the effort.


Couldn't put it down and surprisingly understood it!, 19 May 2008
This book orginally sat in my boyfriends bathroom for a year because I felt this was going to be a hard book to read. When you look at a page without reading it, what stands out is the large amount of words not in standard english, slang and foreign words. Just glancing in it maybe you'd think this was a foreign language book. However when I had nothing else to read and was 'forced' to read this book, I found it surprisingly easy to read and was delighted by the fact that I didn't have to look in the glossary once.
I loved the way the story panned out, was shocked in a way, that the book was more graphic, more controversial than the film. I also think that one feels more sympathetic to the narrators plight than in the film, I suppose this is uncomfortable for some people.
Uncomfortable or not this is a good book.

Better Than The Film, 08 Apr 2008
Like most people I saw the film before I read the book and I am glad that I have viewed both.
The film is a wonderful `work of art` and the book is a modern day masterpiece.
Anthony Burgess painted a picture of modern society 30 years before `youth culture` was invented.
This book compares with Orwells 1984, Bowies `Diamond Dogs` and `Till Death Us Do Part by Garry Jackson.
My biggest wish is a remake of the film.



Must Read..., 31 Oct 2006
Written with relentless honesty and ferociousness, boldly questioning choice and morality. The film would not have been the same if it was ended with the excluded final chapter of the book; an ending I will not spoil.

This reading should be mandatory reading because the book opens the readers eye to mans will to dominate (or force the eye open if you will), and the nature of the beast. It amazes me how this book was written more than four decades ago. How much of Burgess' fiction became reality? Too much.

If you like deciphering fiction the Nadsat language is hilarious and disturbingly childlike. Apparently, Burgess hated the movie. It is clear why he hated the movie, even though the visual representation was spot on.



A Clockwork Orange, 05 Jun 2006
A Clockwork Orange is a very good book in terms of credibility and originality. I saw the movie before I read the book, and straight after I viewed the film, I needed to read the book because I don't understood everything.
When I started reading this book I was startled by the strange language it's written in, the principal person Alex, who narrates the story speaks in his own lingo all the way through the novel and that makes the book difficult in the begin.
For me has Anthony Burgess written this very well and drugs, graphic violence & torture are just some of the things included in this novel, but for me is this absolutely the best English book I have ever read.
But it is very hard to read in parts, because of the language. I would give it a 8 on 10.


Ultra-fab, a must read, 29 Apr 2006
I am studying 'A Clockwork Orange' for my degree and it has become my favourite book. We view 15 year old Alex's life through his eyes and despite being shocked by his tales of rape and violence, Burgess manages to give Alex a likeable edge and I found myself laughing at the black humour in the novel, then instantly feeling uneasy that I was finding rape humourous. But, I realised that it is not the controversial issues in the book that are portrayed as amusing, it is the absurd way that ultra-violence is contrasted with something as innocent and pure as beethoven's ninth. Alex is not a straight-forward character, there is depth and culture amongst the inhuman brutality and this is what makes the book interesting. The best aspect of the book for me is the language Nadsat. The language baffled me at first, but by the end of the book I was reading it as easily as English.

Definately read this book! I have seen the film and enjoyed it, but I found that the humour of the book was lost in the film and the violence seemed to take over. Try and read the book before you see the film, that worked for me.

In short: WOW!, 07 Aug 2005
It's been quite a while since a book has impressed me so much. I didn't want to read it at first - it is, alongside Kubrick's film, infamous for its depiction of violence and brutality. Not really my sort of thing. But I picked it up idly one day and when I started reading, found I couldn't stop!

The novel is set in a strange, dystopian future and focusses on the character of Alex, its 15 year old anti-hero, who spends his free time indulging in ultra-violence, theft, rape and listening ecstatically to classical music. What's amazing about the novel is that Burgess gradually manages to make the reader become so sympathetic to him throughout the book - Alex is bright, witty, defiant; openly confiding his thoughts and feelings to his audience - his "brothers". When the state fiinally catches up with him, locks him, and then starts altering him with the morally dodgy "Ludovico Technique" one can't help but side with him against his 'doctors'.

Part of the book's genius is the fact it's written so beautifully and laid out. Burgess's surreal use of language is incredibly ingenious. He creates the wonderful 'nadsat' slang spoken by Alex and his friends (or 'droogs') through a combination of Russian and different styles of English. As a student of Russian, part of the fun was deciphering the words and sentences, working out the book and storyline as I went along. If at first the book doesn't make sense then just persevere - gradually things will become more coherant and the language suddenly gells and makes sense.

Ultimately, this thought-provoking novel left me with lots to muse about. Questions on morality, society and, most importantly, an individual's free choice are brought up and it's left with the reader to ultimately decide what s/he thinks. The book jacket described this novel as 'one that every generation should read'. I really couldn't agree more!

Tricky, 05 Feb 2005
The kind of book you hear about, the kind of book you believe you really ought to make sure you have read. No problem with that.

However, for many people this book will present itself as very difficult to get a grasp of, it its tricky to make it flow and its certainly not the kind of book to read at night with tired eyes.

Readers of classics will undoubtedly be more suited to getting the most out of this as they will be more adept at drawing out the meaning of the language. The younger reader may well find difficulty in turning the Russian, English and plain invented language into the story.

I enjoyed it, as a read, though the story is hard to enjoy. Its dark and deep and it in no way hides these facts. Its a story that stands out there tall and proud and shouts "Read me if you dare, seek me if you are foolish".

I wont go into the story, as I believe other reviewers have done a fine job.

All that is left to say is that, despite seeming that way, there was no chance this would have a happy ending, too much had gone before and too many things stick in the mind to close on a high note.

An important piece of writing.

The Perfect Novel, 23 Sep 2008
I remember picking this up and getting a feeling of joy bubbling through me when I read the first line and found that I already liked Kenneth Toomey as he explained his thinking behind the first line a little way down the page. I think I was even more surprised that it didn't come across as clever-clever, elitist or smug - it just came over as intelligent, funny, humane writing.

I'm currently reading this for the second time in the space of a year, something I thought I'd long outgrown. This is a book that glories in literary heritage, in theological debate, and in the politics of sexuality, religion and art. Above all, Burgess glories in taking the time to construct a beautifully believable, human hero and peoples the novel with characters both real and imagined (although even the real ones are imagined).

I am a voracious, constant reader and Earthly Powers is my reward - it is the reward for any serious reader. A page turner that is also a great work of art. In my opinion, it's the perfect novel.



garlicky, 13 Aug 2008
garlicky puns???omnilingual jokes!!! top hole old boy...

the best sleeping pill I have ever used...a great cure for insomnia..

like 'young turk' amis, 'contrarian' hitchens, 'beaker' mcewan, 'chuckle chuckle..i'm a devilishly humorous fellow' rushdie - this mindless bore saw himself as high above the qoutidian by virtue of being a writer..another useless english novelist full of his own worth...hits the bulleye once or twice in what ? 37 books is it ?




Religion/Power, 12 Aug 2008
4.7 or 4.8 stars. A remarkable parody of that greatest of cliches - the self-indulgent reflections of a writer. But this is happily more than a conceptual joke. The language is sublime, the moments of brutality a punch in the crotch, the politics of religion masterful, the hero-author dynamic suitably ambiguous, the homosexual caricatures a little overblown but the wit laugh-out-loud. Seek it out.

Response from an Ordinary Person, 18 Jan 2008
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess

A tour de force by an erudite and fluent author; he has structured a framework of individual lives and relationships within which he has opened to examination some of the fundamental contradictions of Catholicism and Christian religion. If God is all seeing and knowing how can he permit such horrors? If he gave all his creation free will then how is it no-one feels free? But these comments just touch the surface of a momentous work. Then I also found it self indulgent and exclusive. Exclusive? because I think he wrote this as much for himself and a small coterie of scholars as any ordinary reader such as myself. I believe I am well read and reasonably literate, but I often stopped at words that I had never come across before, so I wrote them down in a little note book to check their meaning later. This disturbed the rhythm of the text for me and I think such boasting of vocabulary unnecessary. Also his passages on a continent -Africa - I think he has never visited (apart from North Africa - the Muslim Territories) - were wholly unreal and naïve, and for me an uncalled for diversion. Finally; I tried to imagine the effort it must take to create such a work, and can only respond with awe and respect at the energy, talent, scholarship and breadth of knowledge Mr Burgess was able to bring to paper. This is a work that will last in my memory and demand I revisit.


Vivid, evocative, brilliant!, 23 Sep 2007
This, like the Alexandria Quartet, is a book that I initially started reading and stopped again, pretty quickly. Having learnt the error of my ways from re-reading and greatly enjoying the aforementioned AQ, I decided to give this another go and am so glad that I did.

Hard to describe but epic in scope, this book is the personal history of its narrator, Kenneth Toomey, a popular author, playwright and librettist, which also tells the story of a miracle-working (fictional) pope, his relation by marriage. Encompassing the greater part of the twentieth century, and mixing events real and invented, it makes compelling reading, enhanced by the author's vivid style and wickedly funny narrative voice. Well worth persevering with.

Elizabethan Life and Death, 27 May 2004
This is a fascinating book, probably the best historical(-ish!) novel I've read. It's full of the feel of the period, thanks to the style and imagination with which Burgess conjures up all manner of settings and situations from the squalid to the opulent. This is a fascinating story of Marlowe's rise and demise, taking in espionage, homosexuality, poetry and finally murder. Two particular episodes stick in my mind - a gruesome execution scene which really conveys the horror of drawing and quartering; and an hilarious sex scene written in pidgin Latin. Buy this book - it's a real gem.

One of the great gay novels... no, really, 06 Aug 2002
I don't know anything about Anthony Burgess's sex life, but A Dead Man in Deptford (and his masterpiece, Earthly Powers) are two of the most thorough explorations of homosexuality and its place in the culture. Here he recreates Marlowe as a horny Elizabethan jack-the-lad, taking advantage of his fellow theatricals, carrying on with the aristocracy, and debating the nature of sex at every turn. The sex scenes themselves are great, and very funny (at one point the squeamish narrator lapses into latin, which is great for those of us with an O Level). Read it and be amazed.

Burgess takes one on a trip back in time., 12 Feb 2000
Once one becomes accustomed to the language, which whether reading james elroy or shakespeare always takes getting used to, Anthony Burgess takes one spiraling down into the chaotic, paranoid, hopeless elizabethan world where once denounced one was always guilty, always tortured, always drawn and quartered. I felt for the first time what it must be like to live within a framework of absolute fear, of saying, of doing, of thinking,and yet we are still able to enjoy the plays of Marlowe today. It is astounding that a man could create under those circumstances and that what he created has remained for us to enjoy these last 400 or so years. An amazing book.

A choodessny classic, 15 Nov 2008
A Clockwork Orange is a novel written by Anthony Burgess and released in England in 1962. It is now considered to a classic piece of English literature, but was, at the time of release, highly controversial and parts have been banned during different periods of time.
The novel is written in three parts, similar to the music section formation A-B-A. This is a connection to both Burgess's and Alex's love of classical music. Altogether, there are twenty-one chapters, a symbol of Alex growing up at the end of the novel and slowly making changes to becoming an adult. In addition, the title A Clockwork Orange, refers to the cockney slang, "As queer as clockwork orange." The word 'clockwork' is an obvious reference to machines and a less-obvious reference to 'human'. 'Orange' is a reference to the Malay word 'orang', which means 'man', and was inspired by Burgess's stay in Malaysia during World War II.
The narration of the story is in the first-person, by fifteen year-old anti-hero Alex, in a not-so-distant future (apparently, it is set in 1995, as imagined from the 1960s). He narrates the story in a mixture of English and 'nadsat' English-a fragmented, new type of English teenage slang, based on Russian, Polari, Slavic, Cockney rhyming slang and some words made up by Burgess himself.
Alex's nights, and sometimes days, consist of murder and rape. Ironically, he uses classic cultural music, or more specifically, his favourite piece, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, to get ready for his escapades.
However, he later runs in to trouble and is at the mercy of the government, and becomes part of a psychological experiment to 'cure him' of his violent and disturbing behaviour. Burgess questions what real 'goodness' is, and what 'liberalism' is versus 'conformation' in society.

I decided to read A Clockwork Orange as I felt it fitted very well in to our current environment of a lack of morality, violence, rape, crime and overall destruction. I wanted to understand why our society is like it is today, which is similar to the dystopia described in the novel.
Burgess imbued me to believe that it is more important to be an individual than to be controlled to conform to society. Burgess believes that once someone's freedom of choice is deprived, they no longer become human; instead they become a 'machine', something which is worst than death and is most certainly not what God 'intended'. However, in opposition to this, Burgess also outlines that if individuals are left to their own devices, without any law and order, this can be equally dangerous and also destabilises society. He questions his readers on how to "weigh the values and dangers of both individual liberty and state control, and consider how much liberty we're willing to give up for order, and how much order we're willing to give up for liberty."

Although a seemingly straight forward balance of arguments, the ways in which Burgess lifts the novel are extraordinary. Unusually, he uses a teenage anti-hero to demonstrate his arguments, and Alex's childlike yet extremely intellectual wording is persuasive and allows the reader to be sympathetic to him. The use of 'nadsat'-slang jargon used by teenagers, makes the novel futuristic and unreal, giving a certain strange detachment between the reader and the novel, making it almost sci-fi-esque and the crimes distant and somewhat more bearable. Some would argue that these comedic devices undermine the book, as well as make it very individual in terms of written style.
However, ironically, by the 1960s, the violent and disrespectful behaviour demonstrated throughout the novel had already come to light and has increased since. Despite the seemingly large difference between the phonics of 'nadsat' and 'formal English', it is easy to work out what the words mean through context and a few similar phonic sounds. This makes the novel interesting, as 'nadsat' words replace some of the slang used both in the 1960s and now, for example, "horrowshow" is a replacement for 'wicked' or 'sick'.

The use of music is an interesting device, as everyone loves to listen to music to get ready to go out, get up in the morning or whatever other leisure activities they enjoy doing. Readers can relate to Alex's love of listening to music before his nightly and daily activities in a rather abstract manner, where Alex is not getting ready for a normal night out but for a night of massacre, pillage and rape. In addition, the choice of music that Burgess chooses is classic, which is unusual for most teenage hooligans to listen to. It makes Alex almost 'cool', as he is distinctively different from most of the hooligans in his generation, and shows an ironically intellectual mind, despite his thug-like activities. Alex's favourite composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, composed a lot of music associated with the Christian religion, another irony to Alex's seemingly immoral character.

I loved this book, in a rather strange way. Burgess's devices of detachment made some of it funny, particularly Alex's childlike monologues and the novel was descriptive enough to create very vivid and frightening images, but at the same time, it did not fail to make some very serious points questioning the readers on reality, morality, ethics, religion, the idea of individualism and themselves.

Highly individual and very Horrorshow, O My Brothers. , 04 Nov 2008
Anthony Burgess was a literary giant. Despite his wishes, this remains the work for which he is best remembered. Most will know it through the film, with which he had scant involvement but which he defended after Stanley Kubrick became fainthearted. Yet few will have read the novel.

The prose is first person, confessional, in a consistent voice, our narrator the chief protagonist, Alex. The vocabulary is a mixture of English and a language called nadsat, an invented language based primarily on Russian but also German, French, and schoolboy terminology. The idea is you work it out for yourself but around a third of it is not intuitive. (The lazy can use the nadsat dictionary.)

The story is set in a not too distant future, with a terrifyingly bleak and broken down society in the grip of a classic liberal-reactionary struggle. It could well be today if you are a pessimist. The violence and sex is handled adroitly, even imperceptibly, and not at all crudely despite its evident brutality. It translates to screen with rather less subtlety. The scene with two ten year olds would be unfilmable or inflammatory.

The first person narration brings you closer to Alex and somehow you can be both horrified and sympathetic. The treatment he is given is arguably worse than the affliction. It both saves and dooms him, looking after his mind but not his soul. An ironic twist: he can't even read the Bible without feeling sick, and is deprived equally of the means both to offend and to defend. Burgess delivers a very modern parable, shot through with arsenic.

Viddy it carefully, O My Brothers; it's real horrorshow.


Creative and Disturbing, 27 May 2008
This is a fantastic and clever book. It follows in the same vein as Orwell's 1984, but takes things that one step further. The book is narrated by the compelling anti-hero Alex. It is written in the language of the gangs of the streets of this dystopian future place, which now is not so very unlike our own society. Alex hates school and rails against authority, hanging out with his gang of thugs in the Corova Milk Bar, taking drugs, raping girls and enjoying nights of bloody mayhem.

An ill-judged robbery goes hideously wrong and Alex is incarcerated in prison, where he becomes the subject of a new social experiment which claims to reprogramme the brain so that violence is no longer an option. Alex takes us through these events and their aftermath in his peculiarly charming and yet repellent words.

Burgess takes on the big themes of social control, anarchy and free will in this fascinating and brilliant book. If you have read the book you will want to see Kubrick's film, which is also brilliant in a completely different way. If you have seen the film prepare to be wowed by the book. Stick with the language, after a while it becomes easy to read as you become immersed into Alex's world and it's well worth the effort.


Couldn't put it down and surprisingly understood it!, 19 May 2008
This book orginally sat in my boyfriends bathroom for a year because I felt this was going to be a hard book to read. When you look at a page without reading it, what stands out is the large amount of words not in standard english, slang and foreign words. Just glancing in it maybe you'd think this was a foreign language book. However when I had nothing else to read and was 'forced' to read this book, I found it surprisingly easy to read and was delighted by the fact that I didn't have to look in the glossary once.
I loved the way the story panned out, was shocked in a way, that the book was more graphic, more controversial than the film. I also think that one feels more sympathetic to the narrators plight than in the film, I suppose this is uncomfortable for some people.
Uncomfortable or not this is a good book.

Better Than The Film, 08 Apr 2008
Like most people I saw the film before I read the book and I am glad that I have viewed both.
The film is a wonderful `work of art` and the book is a modern day masterpiece.
Anthony Burgess painted a picture of modern society 30 years before `youth culture` was invented.
This book compares with Orwells 1984, Bowies `Diamond Dogs` and `Till Death Us Do Part by Garry Jackson.
My biggest wish is a remake of the film.



Must Read..., 31 Oct 2006
Written with relentless honesty and ferociousness, boldly questioning choice and morality. The film would not have been the same if it was ended with the excluded final chapter of the book; an ending I will not spoil.

This reading should be mandatory reading because the book opens the readers eye to mans will to dominate (or force the eye open if you will), and the nature of the beast. It amazes me how this book was written more than four decades ago. How much of Burgess' fiction became reality? Too much.

If you like deciphering fiction the Nadsat language is hilarious and disturbingly childlike. Apparently, Burgess hated the movie. It is clear why he hated the movie, even though the visual representation was spot on.



A Clockwork Orange, 05 Jun 2006
A Clockwork Orange is a very good book in terms of credibility and originality. I saw the movie before I read the book, and straight after I viewed the film, I needed to read the book because I don't understood everything.
When I started reading this book I was startled by the strange language it's written in, the principal person Alex, who narrates the story speaks in his own lingo all the way through the novel and that makes the book difficult in the begin.
For me has Anthony Burgess written this very well and drugs, graphic violence & torture are just some of the things included in this novel, but for me is this absolutely the best English book I have ever read.
But it is very hard to read in parts, because of the language. I would give it a 8 on 10.


Ultra-fab, a must read, 29 Apr 2006
I am studying 'A Clockwork Orange' for my degree and it has become my favourite book. We view 15 year old Alex's life through his eyes and despite being shocked by his tales of rape and violence, Burgess manages to give Alex a likeable edge and I found myself laughing at the black humour in the novel, then instantly feeling uneasy that I was finding rape humourous. But, I realised that it is not the controversial issues in the book that are portrayed as amusing, it is the absurd way that ultra-violence is contrasted with something as innocent and pure as beethoven's ninth. Alex is not a straight-forward character, there is depth and culture amongst the inhuman brutality and this is what makes the book interesting. The best aspect of the book for me is the language Nadsat. The language baffled me at first, but by the end of the book I was reading it as easily as English.

Definately read this book! I have seen the film and enjoyed it, but I found that the humour of the book was lost in the film and the violence seemed to take over. Try and read the book before you see the film, that worked for me.

In short: WOW!, 07 Aug 2005
It's been quite a while since a book has impressed me so much. I didn't want to read it at first - it is, alongside Kubrick's film, infamous for its depiction of violence and brutality. Not really my sort of thing. But I picked it up idly one day and when I started reading, found I couldn't stop!

The novel is set in a strange, dystopian future and focusses on the character of Alex, its 15 year old anti-hero, who spends his free time indulging in ultra-violence, theft, rape and listening ecstatically to classical music. What's amazing about the novel is that Burgess gradually manages to make the reader become so sympathetic to him throughout the book - Alex is bright, witty, defiant; openly confiding his thoughts and feelings to his audience - his "brothers". When the state fiinally catches up with him, locks him, and then starts altering him with the morally dodgy "Ludovico Technique" one can't help but side with him against his 'doctors'.

Part of the book's genius is the fact it's written so beautifully and laid out. Burgess's surreal use of language is incredibly ingenious. He creates the wonderful 'nadsat' slang spoken by Alex and his friends (or 'droogs') through a combination of Russian and different styles of English. As a student of Russian, part of the fun was deciphering the words and sentences, working out the book and storyline as I went along. If at first the book doesn't make sense then just persevere - gradually things will become more coherant and the language suddenly gells and makes sense.

Ultimately, this thought-provoking novel left me with lots to muse about. Questions on morality, society and, most importantly, an individual's free choice are brought up and it's left with the reader to ultimately decide what s/he thinks. The book jacket described this novel as 'one that every generation should read'. I really couldn't agree more!

Tricky, 05 Feb 2005
The kind of book you hear about, the kind of book you believe you really ought to make sure you have read. No problem with that.

However, for many people this book will present itself as very difficult to get a grasp of, it its tricky to make it flow and its certainly not the kind of book to read at night with tired eyes.

Readers of classics will undoubtedly be more suited to getting the most out of this as they will be more adept at drawing out the meaning of the language. The younger reader may well find difficulty in turning the Russian, English and plain invented language into the story.

I enjoyed it, as a read, though the story is hard to enjoy. Its dark and deep and it in no way hides these facts. Its a story that stands out there tall and proud and shouts "Read me if you dare, seek me if you are foolish".

I wont go into the story, as I believe other reviewers have done a fine job.

All that is left to say is that, despite seeming that way, there was no chance this would have a happy ending, too much had gone before and too many things stick in the mind to close on a high note.

An important piece of writing.

The Perfect Novel, 23 Sep 2008
I remember picking this up and getting a feeling of joy bubbling through me when I read the first line and found that I already liked Kenneth Toomey as he explained his thinking behind the first line a little way down the page. I think I was even more surprised that it didn't come across as clever-clever, elitist or smug - it just came over as intelligent, funny, humane writing.

I'm currently reading this for the second time in the space of a year, something I thought I'd long outgrown. This is a book that glories in literary heritage, in theological debate, and in the politics of sexuality, religion and art. Above all, Burgess glories in taking the time to construct a beautifully believable, human hero and peoples the novel with characters both real and imagined (although even the real ones are imagined).

I am a voracious, constant reader and Earthly Powers is my reward - it is the reward for any serious reader. A page turner that is also a great work of art. In my opinion, it's the perfect novel.



garlicky, 13 Aug 2008
garlicky puns???omnilingual jokes!!! top hole old boy...

the best sleeping pill I have ever used...a great cure for insomnia..

like 'young turk' amis, 'contrarian' hitchens, 'beaker' mcewan, 'chuckle chuckle..i'm a devilishly humorous fellow' rushdie - this mindless bore saw himself as high above the qoutidian by virtue of being a writer..another useless english novelist full of his own worth...hits the bulleye once or twice in what ? 37 books is it ?




Religion/Power, 12 Aug 2008
4.7 or 4.8 stars. A remarkable parody of that greatest of cliches - the self-indulgent reflections of a writer. But this is happily more than a conceptual joke. The language is sublime, the moments of brutality a punch in the crotch, the politics of religion masterful, the hero-author dynamic suitably ambiguous, the homosexual caricatures a little overblown but the wit laugh-out-loud. Seek it out.

Response from an Ordinary Person, 18 Jan 2008
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess

A tour de force by an erudite and fluent author; he has structured a framework of individual lives and relationships within which he has opened to examination some of the fundamental contradictions of Catholicism and Christian religion. If God is all seeing and knowing how can he permit such horrors? If he gave all his creation free will then how is it no-one feels free? But these comments just touch the surface of a momentous work. Then I also found it self indulgent and exclusive. Exclusive? because I think he wrote this as much for himself and a small coterie of scholars as any ordinary reader such as myself. I believe I am well read and reasonably literate, but I often stopped at words that I had never come across before, so I wrote them down in a little note book to check their meaning later. This disturbed the rhythm of the text for me and I think such boasting of vocabulary unnecessary. Also his passages on a continent -Africa - I think he has never visited (apart from North Africa - the Muslim Territories) - were wholly unreal and naïve, and for me an uncalled for diversion. Finally; I tried to imagine the effort it must take to create such a work, and can only respond with awe and respect at the energy, talent, scholarship and breadth of knowledge Mr Burgess was able to bring to paper. This is a work that will last in my memory and demand I revisit.


Vivid, evocative, brilliant!, 23 Sep 2007
This, like the Alexandria Quartet, is a book that I initially started reading and stopped again, pretty quickly. Having learnt the error of my ways from re-reading and greatly enjoying the aforementioned AQ, I decided to give this another go and am so glad that I did.

Hard to describe but epic in scope, this book is the personal history of its narrator, Kenneth Toomey, a popular author, playwright and librettist, which also tells the story of a miracle-working (fictional) pope, his relation by marriage. Encompassing the greater part of the twentieth century, and mixing events real and invented, it makes compelling reading, enhanced by the author's vivid style and wickedly funny narrative voice. Well worth persevering with.

Elizabethan Life and Death, 27 May 2004
This is a fascinating book, probably the best historical(-ish!) novel I've read. It's full of the feel of the period, thanks to the style and imagination with which Burgess conjures up all manner of settings and situations from the squalid to the opulent. This is a fascinating story of Marlowe's rise and demise, taking in espionage, homosexuality, poetry and finally murder. Two particular episodes stick in my mind - a gruesome execution scene which really conveys the horror of drawing and quartering; and an hilarious sex scene written in pidgin Latin. Buy this book - it's a real gem.

One of the great gay novels... no, really, 06 Aug 2002
I don't know anything about Anthony Burgess's sex life, but A Dead Man in Deptford (and his masterpiece, Earthly Powers) are two of the most thorough explorations of homosexuality and its place in the culture. Here he recreates Marlowe as a horny Elizabethan jack-the-lad, taking advantage of his fellow theatricals, carrying on with the aristocracy, and debating the nature of sex at every turn. The sex scenes themselves are great, and very funny (at one point the squeamish narrator lapses into latin, which is great for those of us with an O Level). Read it and be amazed.

Burgess takes one on a trip back in time., 12 Feb 2000
Once one becomes accustomed to the language, which whether reading james elroy or shakespeare always takes getting used to, Anthony Burgess takes one spiraling down into the chaotic, paranoid, hopeless elizabethan world where once denounced one was always guilty, always tortured, always drawn and quartered. I felt for the first time what it must be like to live within a framework of absolute fear, of saying, of doing, of thinking,and yet we are still able to enjoy the plays of Marlowe today. It is astounding that a man could create under those circumstances and that what he created has remained for us to enjoy these last 400 or so years. An amazing book.

creative journalism, 03 Apr 2006
This edition restores Defoe's original punctuation, with capitals for nouns and colons for stops, so the writing has the vitality, weight and elasticity that Defoe meant when he wrote it. I wish Penguin's print was more comfortable to read and blacker.

I first read this book in the early 1970s as a work of fiction because it has been classified as such since the 19th century, and I found the plot dull. When I read it again twenty years later I realized why - this book isn't fiction at all. It is a factual account of what happened in London in 1665, based on his uncle Henry Foe's eyewitness experience, which is blended with Defoe's journalistic research after the event. The result is a marvellous work of journalism that has the vividness of an eyewitness account, taking the reader right into the events, and the mastery of Defoe's talent and research of the whole subject. The eyewitness account is turned into a most vivid masterpiece.

If you try to read the Journal of the Plague Year as fiction it will seem dull because it can't satisfy as such. It doesn't have any of the effects that go with fiction such as plot, fantasy, author's design, or character development. However it is beautifully constructed.


The Journal of the Plague Year is a great work of journalism and is (as far as I know) the most vivid account of any historic event in English. It is great to read and browse in as well.

stunning, 28 Feb 2006
this is my all-time favourite book. the descriptions of the disease are so vital. the book gives a great overview of how life was like back then. being written in an autobiographical style (although the main character is fictional) this book is much better than obviously fictional work on this period. The numerous mentioning of christian religion bothered me at first, but after all that's just part of what life was like back then. there are episodes in this book which I'll never forget, like the mentioning of a man who survived the disease by running around town and swimming across the Thames. An interesting history lesson and, furthermore, a book with very inspiring thoughts on what to make out of life.

An important book!, 04 Mar 2005
This is a brilliant history book, written as fiction by Defoe, who was 5-years-old and stayed living in London throughout the Plague of 1665. He wrote this book some years later from his remembrances of things he saw and heard. Placing himself in the character of a young man, we read stories of great sorrow and great hope alike. Giving us a fascinating insight into the nature of varied human responses to tragedy and disaster. So we learn about people who put their own lives on the line going out to work sometimes in the houses of the already infected just to be able to feed and clothe their family, and then we learn about disturbing characters who used the opportunity for their own ill-gotten gains. It's disturbing to learn that young women were still attacked and raped in the streets of London, and houses were still robbed despite having the 'cross' sign of the Plague infection on their doors.
The book doesn't just centre on the streets of London but travels into the surrounding countryside, remember even places like Walthamstow were at the time considered to be outside London, and very much the countryside.
During it's worst months, thousands of people, both infected and not, were attempting an escape to what they thought was the safety of the country, only to be confronted with pitch-fork wielding locals at the village gates telling them to go away in no uncertain terms. But of course even these people succumbed in the end.
This is not a pleasant read, what with Plague pit descriptions, stories of babies suckling the breasts of their long-dead mothers, and in-depth descriptions of the symptoms. But i believe it's an important read, being both an interesting look at the human psyche and behaviour patterns in a time of great distress, panic and fright, and also as probably the most accurate account of one of this country's most tragic years.
The book touches on the Great Fire of 1666 aswell, and the conclusion the reader is lead to, is that London was a completely different place following those 2 events, even to this very day. A particularly riveting read if you are either a Londoner by birth or live in London.

A choodessny classic, 15 Nov 2008
A Clockwork Orange is a novel written by Anthony Burgess and released in England in 1962. It is now considered to a classic piece of English literature, but was, at the time of release, highly controversial and parts have been banned during different periods of time.
The novel is written in three parts, similar to the music section formation A-B-A. This is a connection to both Burgess's and Alex's love of classical music. Altogether, there are twenty-one chapters, a symbol of Alex growing up at the end of the novel and slowly making changes to becoming an adult. In addition, the title A Clockwork Orange, refers to the cockney slang, "As queer as clockwork orange." The word 'clockwork' is an obvious reference to machines and a less-obvious reference to 'human'. 'Orange' is a reference to the Malay word 'orang', which means 'man', and was inspired by Burgess's stay in Malaysia during World War II.
The narration of the story is in the first-person, by fifteen year-old anti-hero Alex, in a not-so-distant future (apparently, it is set in 1995, as imagined from the 1960s). He narrates the story in a mixture of English and 'nadsat' English-a fragmented, new type of English teenage slang, based on Russian, Polari, Slavic, Cockney rhyming slang and some words made up by Burgess himself.
Alex's nights, and sometimes days, consist of murder and rape. Ironically, he uses classic cultural music, or more specifically, his favourite piece, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, to get ready for his escapades.
However, he later runs in to trouble and is at the mercy of the government, and becomes part of a psychological experiment to 'cure him' of his violent and disturbing behaviour. Burgess questions what real 'goodness' is, and what 'liberalism' is versus 'conformation' in society.

I decided to read A Clockwork Orange as I felt it fitted very well in to our current environment of a lack of morality, violence, rape, crime and overall destruction. I wanted to understand why our society is like it is today, which is similar to the dystopia described in the novel.
Burgess imbued me to believe that it is more important to be an individual than to be controlled to conform to society. Burgess believes that once someone's freedom of choice is deprived, they no longer become human; instead they become a 'machine', something which is worst than death and is most certainly not what God 'intended'. However, in opposition to this, Burgess also outlines that if individuals are left to their own devices, without any law and order, this can be equally dangerous and also destabilises society. He questions his readers on how to "weigh the values and dangers of both individual liberty and state control, and consider how much liberty we're willing to give up for order, and how much order we're willing to give up for liberty."

Although a seemingly straight forward balance of arguments, the ways in which Burgess lifts the novel are extraordinary. Unusually, he uses a teenage anti-hero to demonstrate his arguments, and Alex's childlike yet extremely intellectual wording is persuasive and allows the reader to be sympathetic to him. The use of 'nadsat'-slang jargon used by teenagers, makes the novel futuristic and unreal, giving a certain strange detachment between the reader and the novel, making it almost sci-fi-esque and the crimes distant and somewhat more bearable. Some would argue that these comedic devices undermine the book, as well as make it very individual in terms of written style.
However, ironically, by the 1960s, the violent and disrespectful behaviour demonstrated throughout the novel had already come to light and has increased since. Despite the seemingly large difference between the phonics of 'nadsat' and 'formal English', it is easy to work out what the words mean through context and a few similar phonic sounds. This makes the novel interesting, as 'nadsat' words replace some of the slang used both in the 1960s and now, for example, "horrowshow" is a replacement for 'wicked' or 'sick'.

The use of music is an interesting device, as everyone loves to listen to music to get ready to go out, get up in the morning or whatever other leisure activities they enjoy doing. Readers can relate to Alex's love of listening to music before his nightly and daily activities in a rather abstract manner, where Alex is not getting ready for a normal night out but for a night of massacre, pillage and rape. In addition, the choice of music that Burgess chooses is classic, which is unusual for most teenage hooligans to listen to. It makes Alex almost 'cool', as he is distinctively different from most of the hooligans in his generation, and shows an ironically intellectual mind, despite his thug-like activities. Alex's favourite composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, composed a lot of music associated with the Christian religion, another irony to Alex's seemingly immoral character.

I loved this book, in a rather strange way. Burgess's devices of detachment made some of it funny, particularly Alex's childlike monologues and the novel was descriptive enough to create very vivid and frightening images, but at the same time, it did not fail to make some very serious points questioning the readers on reality, morality, ethics, religion, the idea of individualism and themselves.

Highly individual and very Horrorshow, O My Brothers. , 04 Nov 2008
Anthony Burgess was a literary giant. Despite his wishes, this remains the work for which he is best remembered. Most will know it through the film, with which he had scant involvement but which he defended after Stanley Kubrick became fainthearted. Yet few will have read the novel.

The prose is first person, confessional, in a consistent voice, our narrator the chief protagonist, Alex. The vocabulary is a mixture of English and a language called nadsat, an invented language based primarily on Russian but also German, French, and schoolboy terminology. The idea is you work it out for yourself but around a third of it is not intuitive. (The lazy can use the nadsat dictionary.)

The story is set in a not too distant future, with a terrifyingly bleak and broken down society in the grip of a classic liberal-reactionary struggle. It could well be today if you are a pessimist. The violence and sex is handled adroitly, even imperceptibly, and not at all crudely despite its evident brutality. It translates to screen with rather less subtlety. The scene with two ten year olds would be unfilmable or inflammatory.

The first person narration brings you closer to Alex and somehow you can be both horrified and sympathetic. The treatment he is given is arguably worse than the affliction. It both saves and dooms him, looking after his mind but not his soul. An ironic twist: he can't even read the Bible without feeling sick