A Clockwork Orange: Restored Edition

Synopsis

Fully restored edition of Anthony Burgess’ original text of A Clockwork Orange, with a glossary of the teen slang ‘Nadsat’, explanatory notes, pages from the original typescript, interviews, articles and reviews

Edited by Andrew Biswell With a Foreword by Martin Amis

‘It is a horrorshow story …’

Fifteen-year-old Alex likes lashings of ultraviolence. He and his gang of friends rob, kill and rape their way through a nightmarish future, until the State puts a stop to his riotous excesses. But what will his re-education mean?

A dystopian horror, a black comedy, an exploration of choice, A Clockwork Orange is also a work of exuberant invention which created a new language for its characters. This critical edition restores the text of the novel as Anthony Burgess originally wrote it, and includes a glossary of the teen slang ‘Nadsat’, explanatory notes, pages from the original typescript, interviews, articles and reviews, shedding light on the enduring fascination of the novel’s ‘sweet and juicy criminality’.

Author

Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917 and educated at Xaverian College and Manchester University. He served in the British army from 1940 to 1946 and was a schoolteacher in England before becoming a colonial education officer in 1954. His Malayan trilogy of novels and a history of English literature were published while he was living in Malaya and Brunei.

He became a full-time writer in 1959 and achieved a worldwide reputation as one of the most versatile novelists of his day. His writings include biographies of Shakespeare and Hemingway, critical studies of James Joyce, stage plays, and two volumes of autobiography. His work as a composer and librettist includes the Broadway musical, Cyrano, and Blooms of Dublin, an operetta based on Joyce’s Ulysses.

His 33 novels continue to be published all over the world. They include A Clockwork Orange, Nothing Like the Sun, The Complete Enderby, Earthly Powers, Napoleon Symphony, and Beard’s Roman Women, a collaboration with the photographer David Robinson.

Anthony Burgess died in London in 1993.