A Clockwork Orange

By Anthony Burgess

Categories: Literature & Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

A Clockwork Orange (1962) is Anthony Burgess's dystopian novel about Alex, a teenage gang leader in a near-future England, told in Nadsat, an invented slang laced with Russian. Alex loves Beethoven and nightly violence. Jailed after a killing, he agrees to the Ludovico Technique, a conditioning treatment that makes him sick at the thought of violence, raising questions about free will and imposed goodness. This Norton edition includes the final chapter left out of the first American edition and Burgess's introduction, "A Clockwork Orange Resucked."

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• Bill Gates: “my teachers had me read a lot of great Books A Clockwork Orange showed me that both evil and goodness are necessary parts of the human experience ... these books all shaped who I am today”