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  • Published: 1 July 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099468646
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 656
  • RRP: $36.99

Earthly Powers




Rollicking, panoramic epic of 20th century by the author of 'A Clockwork Orange'

Kenneth Toomey is an eminent novelist of dubious talent; Don Carlo Campanati is a man of God, a shrewd manipulator who rises through the Vatican to become the architect of church revolution and a candidate for sainthood. These two men are linked not only by family ties but by a common understanding of mankind's frailties. In this epic masterpiece, Anthony Burgess plumbs the depths of the essence of power and the lengths men will go for it.

  • Published: 1 July 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099468646
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 656
  • RRP: $36.99

About the author

Anthony Burgess

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.

He achieved a worldwide reputation as one of the leading novelists of his day, and one of the most versitile. His writings include criticism, scripts and translations, and a Broadway musical, and he composed three symphonies which have been publicly performed in the USA. His books have been published all over the world and include A Clockwork Orange, The Clockwork Testament, Inside Mr Enderby, Enderby's Dark Lady, Earthly Powers, Abba Abba and The End of the World News.

Anthony Burgess died in 1993.

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Praise for Earthly Powers

Burgess is the great postmodern storehouse of British writing-an important experimentalist; an encyclopaedic amasser, but also a maker of form; a playful comic, with a dark gloom

Malcolm Bradbury

Enormous imagination and vitality - a huge book in every way

Sunday Times

A hellfire tract thrown down by a novelist at the peak of his powers

The Times

In all ways, a remarkable book

Paul Theroux

Wildly funny-a masterpiece

A. S. Byatt, Daily Mail

Burgess's ambitious study of 20th-century history centers on the stormy relationship between an effete, popular novelist and a Faustian priest

Publishers Weekly

Crowded, crammed, bursting with manic erudition, garlicky puns, omnilingual jokes... which meshes the real and personalised history of the twentieth century

Martin Amis