One of Esquire's 50 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time “A brilliant novel.… [A] savage satire on the distortions of the single and collective minds.”―New York TimesIn Anthony Burgess’s influential nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, a teen who talks in a fantastically inventive slang that evocatively renders his and his friends’ intense reaction against their society. Dazzling and transgressive, A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil and the meaning of human freedom. This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition, and Burgess’s introduction, “A Clockwork Orange Resucked.” 6 illustrations
Thoughts
I was pleasantly surprised when what at first read like gibberish turned out to be romanized and modified Russian, although the consensus online seems to be that learning the unique nadsat language makes the experience of reading this book more meaningful. In any case, even without the added linguistic challenge, the questions “Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?” will stick with me.
I like to imagine that Burgess was so entertained by the Russian word for “good” sounding like “horrorshow” that it inspired him to write a book based on the play on words 😅