A vicious fifteen-year-old quot;droogquot; is the central character of this 1963 classic, whose stark terror was captured in Stanley Kubrick's magnificent film of the same title. In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. When the state undertakes to reform Alex--to quot;redeemquot; him--the novel asks, quot;At what cost?quot; This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction quot;A Clockwork Orange Resucked.quot;
In this 1962 classic, a novelistic exploration of modern crime and punishment, Alex is the 15-year-old leader of his gang of "droogs" thriving in the ultraviolent future as prophetically imagined by Burgess. Speaking a bizarre Russian-derived slang, Alex and his friends freely pillage and slash their way across a nightmarish urban landscape until Alex is captured by the judicial arm of the state. He then becomes their prized guinea pig in a scientific program to completely "redeem" him for society. If we had the power of absolute criminal reform, what, the novel asks, would this mean for our ideals of freedom and society?
- Genre: Fiction + Literature Genres, Fiction + Literature Themes, Science Fiction + Fantasy
- Subgenre: Literary, Philosophy, Social Criticism, Society + Social Issues, Literary Genres + Types of Novels, Human Qualities + Behavior, Legal + Courtroom + Crime, Conflicts + Dualities, New Wave
- Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
- Pages: 192
- Edition: Reissue
- Language: English
- Format: paperback
- Release Date: June 1, 1995
- Date Published: June 1, 1995
- Author: Anthony Burgess
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