A Vision of Battlements is the first novel by the writer and composer Anthony Burgess, who was born in Manchester in 1917. Set in Gibraltar during the Second World War, the book follows the fortunes of Richard Ennis, an army sergeant and incipient composer who dreams of composing great music and building a new cultural world after the end of the war. Following the example of his literary hero, James Joyce, Burgess takes the structure of his book from Virgil's Aeneid. The result is, like Joyce's Ulysses, a comic rewriting of a classical epic, whose critique of the Army and the postwar...

This novel is one of Anthony Burgess's most accessible and entertaining works. By turns bawdy, raucous, tender and bittersweet, and full of music and songs, this is a warm and affectionate portrait of the working-class Lancashire of the 1920s and 1930s that he knew from his own early life.

Part of the forthcoming Irwell Edition of the Works of Anthony Burgess, this book offers an opportunity to reappraise an unjustly neglected novel important to our understanding of Burgess's wider oeuvre. The 2017 Burgess centenary makes this a key moment for reflection on the life and work of a major...

Puma - published for the first time in its intended format - is Anthony Burgess's lost science fiction novel. Set some way into the future, the story details the crushing of the planet Earth by a heavyweight intruder from a distant galaxy - the dreaded Puma. -- .

Anthony Burgess's 'hybrid' novel has been out of print in the UK for almost twenty years. Paul Howard's new edition restores the original text and demystifies Burgess's engagement with his Italian and English sources. -- .

'What can literature and music do for each other?' In This man and music, novelist and composer Anthony Burgess explores the topic, touching on composition, poetry, prose, and his own personal experiences. -- .