Clockwork orange director

Introduction
Author Biography
Plot Summary
Characters
Themes
Style
Historical Context
Critical Overview
Criticism
Sources
Further Reading

Introduction

Published in 1962, Anthony Burgess's A Clock-work Orange is set in the future and narrated by fifteen-year-old Alex in Nadsat—a language invented by Burgess and comprised of bits of Russian, English, and American slang, rhyming words, and "gypsy talk".

The British edition of the novel contains three sections divided into seven chapters, for a total of twenty-one chapters, the number symbolizing adulthood. The original American edition, however, contains only twenty chapters, as the publisher cut the last chapter because he felt it was too sentimental.

A new American edition came out in 1987 with the expunged chapter restored. Although Burgess claimed that the book is neither his favorite nor his best, A Clockwork Orange helped to establish his international reputation, owing largely to Stanley Kubrick's film