Byrne

Anthony Burgess

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Published by Hutchinson, part of Cornerstone Publishing

Format: Unspecified

£179.88

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Details

EAN: 9780091792640
Published: 5 Oct 1995

About the book

Synopsis

Byrne is Anthony Burgess's final work: an epic verse novel.

Michael Byrne is a minor modern composer with greater talent in bed than in the concert hall. A bigamist, a charmer and a thug, Byrne sells his talents as a composer and painter, ending up in Hitler's Third Reich. He moves opportunistically from country to country and from bed to bed, leaving a small tribe of children across the globe. He then vanishes and the story passes to his children, including twin sons, one a doubting priest, the other sick of an incapacitating disease, who move across the troubled face of contemporary Europe before encountering their father in one final apocalyptic confrontation. Brilliantly readable, enormously funny and full of passion and energy, it is also Anthony Burgess's last powerful statement of life and art.

Press

What the critics say

A rumbustious memorial to one of the most unignorable literary presences of our time
- Sunday Times

Dazzling... A brilliant and surprising conclusion to the career of one of the most intelligent and tireless writers of the century
- Mail on Sunday

A fine book
- Independent

Byrne is full of his characteristic wit, gusto and erudition
- Observer

A complex dark comedy in fluently rhymed verse. Frequently hilarious and always engaging, this final book simultaneously satisfies the differing demands of prose fiction and narrative verse. Composed mostly in the same ottava rima that Byron used for 'Don Juan,' Byrne shows Burgess in command of his poetic medium. One might expect an author to experience new spiritual insight on his deathbed, but such a technical breakthrough is highly unusual
- New York Times

By this author

About the Author

Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917. He served in the army from 1940 to 1954 before becoming a colonial education officer. It was while he held this post that doctors told him he would die, and he decided to try to live by writing. A prolific and respected author, Burgess died in 1993.