New Releases by anthony burgess

Anthony Burgess provides a cogent and passionate argument for each of the books on this controversial, stimulating list.

Enderby is a dyspeptic British poet, 56 years old, and The Clockwork Testament is an account of his last day alive. The day in question is a cold one in February. He spends it in New York City, where for the past several months he''s been working as a visiting professor of English literature and composing a long poem about St. Augustine and Pelagius.

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.

Himself a well know writer, Burgess traces Hemingway''s life through the world wars, Paris of the 1920s, the Spanish Civil War, and the last years in Cuba. He describes both the compulsive super-masculine braggart and the sensitive literary artist. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

An English businessman returns from the Orient to find his country infested with greed, boredom, and corruption

"Burgessian" Rome. Like the locations of many of his novels, Rome here takes on a texture that can only exist in Burgess. The plot concerns Mr. John Beard, a hack writer having a hell of a time (so to speak) in the Eternal City. Full of Nabokovian autoparody (a "better" writer visits Mr. Beard and pounds away at some of Burgess''s own aesthetics) and some fairly relentless lascivity, "Beard''s Roman Women" will be appreciated most by the Burgess-fanatics. --A Customer at Amazon.com.

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.

In this magnificent portrait if Shakespeare''s world, the life of England''s greatest playwright is recreated by one of the great novelists of our day.