Word: burgess
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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LIFE IS A CABARET, death a blast, and apocalypse in Burgess' twenty-sixth novel or "entertainment," as he labels it. Not only is this "very deep" book a "bargain," it will "slip down as easily as a dozen oysters well-sharpened with lemon juice and tobacco," as the author declares in the jacket blurb. The book is really three stories in one. All concern the end of human history adapted for the modern TV viewer. At times The End of the World News is all that its author promises: at times it is merely quirky. But whatever its flaws, this...
...member of British intelligence during World War II he leaked information to the Soviets. Though he was allowed to continue advising the Queen until his retirement, he privately confessed to British authorities in 1964 that he was the "fourth man" along with three notorious fellow Cambridge traitors: Guy Burgess, who died in Moscow in 1963; Donald Maclean, who died in Moscow last month; and H.A.R. ("Kim") Philby, still living in the Soviet Union...
...another channel, Leon Trotsky visits New York City in 1917 to rouse the American proletariat. Burgess tells this story in the form of a libretto for a Broadway musical, complete with lyrics. Trotsky falls for Olga, a hardheaded party worker, while his wife cavorts with a wealthy socialist. Four hearts beat as one until the revolutionary's son is reported missing. Trotsky's life is changed forever when he is reunited with the boy, and the songs turn as sentimental as the story. At the finale, the hero chants, "Family's first,/ Love is completeness,/ Power...
...different kind of burnout looms Over the Commonwealth of the Democratic Americas in A.D. 2000, as Burgess plays with a well-known science fiction theme. An iron-heavy planet, code-named Lynx, threatens to vaporize the earth in this third and most complete tale. Valentine Brodie, a jittery, lustful, heavy-drinking young "future fiction" writer, is to accompany a space ark populated by an elite, computer-selected group of scientists and thinkers. They have been chosen to carry civilization to the next world. Brodie, like Freud, is fond of cigars, panatellas called Solzhenitsyns. He is also fond...
True, the author has abused his poetic license; he is often perverse for perversity's sake, and he can be more outrageous than illuminating. Even so, he has produced a highly original volume-his 41st book in 27 years. Carry on, Burgess...