Anthony Burgess [Hardcover]

A hugely entertaining comic fiction that explores all the agonies of authorship.."

'A great genius may appear in almost any disguise; even in the disguise of a successful novelist'. Chesterton

A bloody good read.

There are passages of such brilliance ... that I found it exhilarating as well as infuriating.

This biography is the culmination and distillation of 20 years' work on Anthony Burgess (1917-1993), the author who remains best known for "A Clockwork Orange", the source for Stanley Kubrick's classic film. Yet Burgess was the author of over 60 books, ranging from airport blockbusters to a history of the stagecoach, from brilliant studies of Joyce, Shakespeare, Hemingway and D.H. Lawrence, to meditations on music and pot-boilers on beds and pornography. When he died, he left approximately three million dollars in the bank and ten or so houses or apartments scattered across Europe. Burgess, argues Roger Lewis, was the writer as faker and prankster who lived, like an actor, by deception and illusion. Tracking his quarry from Manchester to Malaya to Malta to Monte Carlo, Lewis assesses Burgess's struggles and grudges and uncovers the webs of truth and lies.Thi s biography is populated with a cast of drunks, nymphomaniacs, egotists, famous 20th-century authors, and actors.

Roger Lewis, formerly a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, is the author of numerous biographies and is a prolific literary journalist. The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is in pre-production as a biopic and Channel Four's acclaimed documentary, Larry and Viv: The Oliviers in Love, was based on his book, The Real Life of Laurence Olivier.