Best Selling Books by Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) was a British novelist, critic and composer. He was also a librettist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, essayist, travel writer, and educationalist. This title brings together a collection of interviews from between 1971 and 1989, that capture Burgess'' famed energy, inventiveness, and linguistic talent.

(Applause Books). Anthony Burgess was the author of over 50 books, including his best known novel, "A Clockwork Orange." But Burgess always emphasized music as the ruling passion in his creative life. Largely self-taught in music, Burgess composed his first symphony before he was twenty, many years before his first novel, and he was the composer of over 65 musical works. In these deeply insightful meditations, the renowned writer explores the meaning of music, the intention of the composer and the process of composition, and the seemingly elusive relationships between literature and music. Burgess shows how "the process of literary composition are revealed by the writers themselves" and then gathers evidence to understand the "inexplicable magic" of the details of the operation of music what is music''s "intelligibility"? From Shakespeare to the lyric verse of Gerard Manley Hopkins, from the modernists T.S. Eliot and James Joyce to the modern lyricists Lorenz Hart and Stephen Sondheim, Burgess reveals how prose writers have struggled to tap the inherent musicality of their material. This treasured classic, at last back in print, provides a fascinating perspective on the mutually enriching relationship of these two creative arts by a man who mastered them both.

"In Earthly Powers Burgess created his masterpiece. 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. Through the lives of these two modern men Burgess explores the very essence of power. 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. 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." -- Publisher.

Kicked out of college and harassed by his lawyer, Miles Faber abandons New York and embarks on a defiant pilgrimage across the Caribbean to find the shrine of Sib Legeru, an obscure poet and painter. But in the streets of Castita''s capital, where a wild religious festival is in full swing, a series of bizarre encounters - including his own repulsive doppelgänger (the son of a circus bird-woman) - and disturbing family revelations await Miles, who soon finds himself a willing victim of dynastic destiny. A darkly surreal comedy of dazzling linguistic inventiveness, MF is an outrageous tale of blood, lust and the machinations of fate.

Before Shakespeare in Love, there was Anthony Burgess''s Nothing Like the Sun: a magnificent, bawdy telling of Shakespeare''s love life.

Sometimes when I''m at work and waiting for customers I think about the two of us living like kings and not bothering about the future. Because there may not be any future to bother about, you know. Not for anybody, one of these days. And it''s a wicked world. Average couple Janet and Howard''s lives begin to unravel when Howard''s photographic memory helps win him a gameshow fortune. Janet doesn''t want their lives to change that much. She''s quite happy working at the supermarket, cooking for her husband three times a day and watching quiz shows in the evening. But once Howard unleashes his photographic brain on the world, the once modest used-car salesman can''t seem to stop. And what he sees as the logical conclusion to his success isn''t something Janet can agree to. Burgess''s 1961 darkly comic satire of drab English consumerism is adapted for the stage by Lucia Cox. This edition was published to coincide with the US premiere at the Brits Off-Broadway Festival, at 59E59 Theatre, New York, in May 2015.

The narrative begins in 1959, with the author''s return to England from Brunei and, after the prognosis which gave him a year to live is confounded, the start of his professional writing career. It ends in 1983. The book is the sequel to "Little Wilson and Big God."

Takes the reader, with laughter, to the heart of the Cold War as Paul Hussey, an antiques dealer from Sussex, tries to wheel and deal in Leningrad.

Presented without chapter breaks, the plot weaves together three storylines. One follows Leon Trotsky on a journey to New York City shortly before the Russian Revolution of 1917. This story is written as the libretto of an Off-Broadway musical. A second tale covers the life and career of Sigmund Freud and includes portrayals of Havelock Ellis and Krafft-Ebing. The third part is set in the future, shortly before the impact of a rogue, extrasolar planet with the Earth. Because of the latter story line, it is considered a work of fantastic fiction.

A brilliantly funny spy novel, this morality tale of a Secret Service gone mad features sex, gluttony, violence, and treachery. From the author of the ground-breaking A Clockwork Orange. Denis Hillier is an aging British agent based in Yugoslavia. His old school friend Roper has defected to the USSR to become one of the evil empire''s great scientific minds. Hillier must bring Roper back to England or risk losing his fat retirement bonus. As thoughtful as it is funny, this morality tale of a Secret Service gone mad features sex, gluttony, violence, treachery, and religion. Anthony Burgess''s cast of astonishing characters includes Roper''s German prostitute wife; Miss Devi and her Tamil love treatise; and the large Mr. Theodorescu, international secret monger and lascivious gourmand. A rare combination of the deadly serious and the absurd, the lofty and the lusty, Tremor of Intent will hold you in its thrall.

BYRNE is Anthony Burgess''s fianl work: an epic verse novel. It tells the story of a rampant Irish artist who, in the early years of this century, goes rapidly to the bad, philandering at every opportunity, selling his talents as a composer and painter, and ending up in Hitler''s Third Reich. He then vanishes and the story passes to his children, including twin sons, one a doubting priest, the other sick of an incapacitating disease, who move across the troubled face of contemporary Europe before encountering their father in one final apocalyptic confrontation. Brilliantly readable, enormously funny and full of passion and energy, it is also Anthony Burgess''s last powerful statement of life and art.

Set in the near future, The Wanting Seed is a Malthusian comedy about the strange world overpopulation will produce.

The tragedy of Oedipus, who unknowingly slays his father and marries his mother, is one of the mythical cornerstones of Western civilization. Nicholas Rudall''s new translation remains true to Sophocles original text while fashioning a language of grace and power, with contemporary players and theatergoers in mind.