Today in Manchester the International Anthony Burgess Foundation is organising a walking tour of his haunts and holding a symposium. Tomorrow BBC Radio 3 is broadcasting Christopher Eccleston in Burgess' version of Oedipus Rex. And he lost his job at The Yorkshire Post because he reviewed one of the books he had secretly written himself under the pseudonym Joseph Kell.Įvents are taking place to make the Burgess Centenary. He once wrote five books in a year to leave some money for his widow. When I chose Anthony Burgess as my specialist subject on Celebrity Mastermind, I made a horrible mistake because there is too much to know about the man and his work. In my opinion Earthly Powers, which was runner up for the Booker Prize, is a rather obviously contrived greatest hits. The Doctor Is Sick, based on the time Burgess thought he was dying of a brain tumour, is typically hilarious.Īway from social comedy, he wrote excellent novels about great writers, including a lusty young Shakespeare in Nothing Like The Sun, a religiously conflicted Marlowe in A Dead Man in Deptford, and the dying Keats in ABBA ABBA.Įxperimental dystopian companion pieces to A Clockwork Orange include M/F, which muses on gender and structuralism, and The Wanting Seed and 1985. Burgess' reputation is beginning to recover from the slump which usually follows a writer's death.Īs his books come back into print the curious might start with Enderby or The Malayan Trilogy.
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