If all you're looking for is something entertaining to read, and you enjoy British snark and bitchiness, then this is the ticket.Īs a work of literature, however, it fell far short. I actually had fun reading large chunks of the book. That two-star rating might be a little unfair. He translated and adapted Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus the King, and Carmen for the stage scripted Jesus of Nazareth and Moses the Lawgiver for the screen invented the prehistoric language spoken in Quest for Fire and composed the Sinfoni Melayu, the Symphony (No. He published studies of Joyce, Hemingway, Shakespeare and Lawrence, produced the treatises on linguistics Language Made Plain and A Mouthful of Air, and was a prolific journalist, writing in several languages. His fiction includes the Malayan trilogy (The Long Day Wanes) on the dying days of Britain's empire in the East the Enderby quartet of novels about a poet and his muse Nothing Like the Sun, a recreation of Shakespeare's love-life A Clockwork Orange, an exploration of the nature of evil and Earthly Powers, a panoramic saga of the 20th century. Born in Manchester, he lived for long periods in Southeast Asia, the USA and Mediterranean Europe as well as in England. He was also a librettist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, travel writer, broadcaster, translator, linguist and educationalist. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.Īnthony Burgess was a British novelist, critic and composer.

This astonishing company is joined together by the art of a great novelist into an explosive and entertaining tour de force that will captivate fans of sweeping historic fiction.

As each pursues his career-one to sainthood, one to wealthy exile-their relationship becomes the heart of a narrative that incorporates almost everyone of fame and distinction in the social, literary, and political life of America and Europe. Through the lives of these two modern men Burgess explores the very essence of power. At its center are two twentieth-century men who represent different kinds of power-Kenneth Toomey, eminent novelist, a man who has outlived his contemporaries to survive into honored, bitter, luxurious old age as a celebrity of dubious notoriety and Don Carlo Campanati, a man of God, eventually beloved Pope, who rises through the Vatican as a shrewd manipulator to become the architect of church revolution and a candidate for sainthood.

In Earthly Powers Burgess created his masterpiece.

His work is illuminated by a dazzling imagination, by a gift for character and plot, by a talent for surprise. Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, is regarded as one of the most original and daring writers in the English language.

Earthly Powers by David Anderson