Anthony Burgess (1917-93) was an English novelist, critic, and man of letters whose fictional explorations of modern dilemmas combine wit, moral earnestness, and a note of the bizarre.
His A Clockwork Orange (1962; filmed 1971) made his reputation as a novelist of comic and mordant power. Other novels include The Eve of Saint Venus (1964), Enderby Outside (1968), Earthly Powers (1980), The End of the World News (1983), The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985), Any Old Iron (1989), and A Dead Man in Deptford (1993). He also wrote a two-volume autobiography, Little Wilson and Big God: Being the First Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess (1987) and You've Had Your Time: Being the Second Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess (1990).
An exploration of the very essence of power centers on two men who represent different types of earthly power--one an eminent novelist and well-known homosexual, the other a man of God who rises through the Vatican hierarchy
