Anthony Burgess

Sep 10
2009

From Mythmakers and Lawbreakers:

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) is famous today as the author of A Clockwork Orange, but it was only one of his over 30 novels. He said that he deeply regretted how the film adaptation seemed to glorify sexual violence, and how easily people misread that book. He was also an anarchist: “I’ve never had any money, therefore I’ve no sympathy for capitalists … I suppose I end up as an anarchist” (from Anthony Burgess, a biography by Roger Lewis, 2002). In his younger life, while serving in the British army, he was often in trouble for defying authority, including being arrested for insulting Spanish fascist Franco. In addition to being a novelist, he was an accomplished literary critic, linguist, composer.


From Ben Beck’s Anarchism and Science Fiction:

… the first part of Burgess’s 1985 – displays an extensive knowledge of the anarchist movement, its history and philosophy. References to the Spanish Civil War or to Sacco & Vanzetti are unusual but not unique in sf, but Burgess’s mention of an anarchist youth movement in China’s Yunan province almost certainly is. A chapter entitled ‘Bakunin’s Children’ actually incorporates a three-page biographical portrait of Bakunin, whom he describes as ‘the rank meat in a more rational anarchical sandwich, tastier than the dry bread of theory that Proudhon offered before him and Kropotkin after.’

Novels available on Amazon:

Short story collections from Amazon:

Screenplays on IMDB (all biblical):

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