The International Anthony Burgess Foundation Podcast

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, writer and academic Sarah Graham leads Graham Foster through the 1940s Manhattan of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.Published in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye follows Holden Caulfield, a bereaved teenager who recalls a weekend spent in Manhattan after he is expelled from boarding school. As he tells his story of wandering the streets looking for some form of connection in seedy hotels, bars, and nightclubs, he gradually reveals his own state of mind and his desire to rebel against the society that he doesn’t understand.J.D. Salinger was born in New York in 1919. After participating in some of the most consequential battles of World War II, he began writing short stories for the New Yorker, many of which centred around the Glass family. After publishing the short story collections Nine Stories (1953) and Franny and Zooey (1961), and the volume of two novellas Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), he retired from public life. He died in 2010.Sarah Graham is Associate Professor in American Literature at the University of Leicester. Her most recent publications are A History of the Bildungsroman (CUP, 2019) and reviews of American fiction for the Times Literary Supplement. She published a reader’s guide to The Catcher in the Rye in 2007 (Continuum), edited a collection of essays on the novel for Routledge (2007), and has contributed to magazines, conferences and programmes discussing Salinger’s work, including ‘J. D. Salinger: Made in England’ for BBC Radio 4.-----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy J.D. Salinger:Nine Stories (1953)By others:David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884)The Kit Book for Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines (1943)A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (2022)-----LINKSSalinger's The Catcher in the Rye: A Reader's Guide by Sarah GrahamA History of the Bildungsroman, edited by Sarah GrahamInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationBurgess Foundation's Free Substack NewsletterThe theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, we’re joined by novelist Adam Roberts, who introduces us to Life in the West by Brian Aldiss.Life in the West tells the story of Thomas Squire, a filmmaker who is attending an academic conference to introduce his new documentary, Frankenstein in the Arts. At the conference he engages in conversations with the other attendees while dealing with the dissolution of his marriage, the trauma of his childhood and the violent years he spent in Yugoslavia as a member of British intelligence. Anthony Burgess calls the novel ‘a rich book, not afraid of thought.’Brain Aldiss was born in 1925. After serving in Burma during World War II he worked as a bookseller in Oxford, which was the inspiration for his first novel The Brightfount Diaries, published in 1955. He went on to become one of the most respected British science fiction writers, writing 41 novels, 26 collections of short stories, 8 volumes of poetry, 5 volumes of autobiography and many more works of literary criticism, drama and edited anthologies. He died in 2017 at the age of 92.Adam Roberts is a writer and an academic at Royal Holloway, University of London. His most recent novel, Lake of Darkness is available now. A History of Fantasy is forthcoming from Bloomsbury (2025).-----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Brian Aldiss:Hothouse (1962)Greybeard (1964)Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1973)Frankenstein Unbound (1973)Helliconia Trilogy (1982-85)Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1986)Forgotten Life (1988)Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith's: A Writing Life (1990)Remembrance Day (1993)Twinkling of an Eye, or My Life as an Englishman (1998)Somewhere East of Life (1994)'Supertoys Last All Summer Long' in The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s Part 2 (2015)By others:Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (1955)A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess (1980)The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)Small World by David Lodge (1984)-----LINKSLake of Darkness by Adam Roberts (affiliate link)Fantasy: A Short History by Adam Roberts (forthcoming)Adam Roberts's blog at MediumInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationBurgess Foundation's newsletter at SubstackThe theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, Will Carr is joined by writer and academic Paul Fagan to discuss At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien.At Swim-Two-Birds is narrated by a young undergraduate student who invents wild stories featuring a host of strange character. The novel consists of three of the student’s seemingly unlinked stories that introduce characters such as Furriskey who is a fictional character created by the equally fictional Trellis, a writer of Westerns. As the narrative progresses, the student’s characters seem to take on a life of their own, and the novel becomes an absurdist brew of Irish folklore, farce, and comedic satire.Flann O’Brien was born Brian Ó Nualláin in County Tyrone, Ireland in 1911. After studying at University College Dublin he joined the Irish Civil Service, during which time he wrote novels in both English and Irish Gaelic, scripts for television and theatre, and newspaper columns as Myles na gCopaleen. He died in 1966.Paul Fagan is a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at Maynooth University, where he is working on the Irish Research Council project Celibacy in Irish Women's Writing, 1860s-1950s. He is a co-founder of the International Flann O’Brien Society, a founding general editor of the Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies. He is the co-editor of Finnegans Wake: Human and Nonhuman Histories, Irish Modernisms: Gaps, Conjectures, Possibilities, as well as five edited volumes on Flann O’Brien.-----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Flann O'Brien:An Béal Bocht (1941)The Hard Life (1961)The Dalkey Archive (1964)The Third Policeman (1967)The Best of Myles (1968)By others:The Golden Ass by Apuleius (c. 200)The Fenian Cycle (from c. 600)The Madness of Sweeney (c. 1200)Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605-15)Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1623)A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift (1704)The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (1759)The Crock of Gold by James Stephens (1912)Orlando by Virginia Woolf (1928)Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)Travelling People by BS Johnson (1963)If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (1979)Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino (1979)Lanark by Alasdair Gray (1981)Blooms of Dublin by Anthony Burgess (1982)A Colder Eye: The Modern Irish Writers by Hugh Kenner (1983)House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski (2000)Milkman by Anna Burns (2018)-----LINKSFinnegans Wake: Human and Nonhuman Histories, edited by Paul Fagan and Richard BarlowInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationBurgess Foundation SubstackThe theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, we’re getting the intel on Catch-22 by Joseph Heller from our guest Spencer Morrison.Catch-22 takes us back to the dying days of the Second World War and introduces us to Yossarian, a US Air Force bombardier who is stationed on an island off the coast of Italy. Yossarian’s traumatic missions are contrasted with his life on the base, which is populated by various oddball airmen who all have their own agendas. They are overseen by commanding officers who are more concerned with abstract bureaucracy and arbitrary rules than the reality of the war. When Yossarian attempts to get out of flying any more missions he is faced with the most insidious rule of all, Catch-22, which states if an airman flies missions he is crazy and doesn’t have to, but if he doesn’t want to fly missions then he is sane and has to.Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn in 1923. In 1942, he joined the US Air Force and served as a bombardier on the Italian Front, his experiences informing Catch-22. His first published story appeared in Atlantic magazine in 1948 while he was working as a copywriter for an advertising firm. He went on to write seven novels, a collection of short stories, three plays, three screenplays and two volumes of autobiography. In the 1970s he worked alongside Anthony Burgess in the Creative Writing department at City College New York. He died in 1999.Spencer Morrison is an assistant professor of English Language and Culture at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands, where he specializes in post-WWII American literature. His writing has been published, or is forthcoming, in journals such as American Literary History, ELH, American Literature, and Genre, and he's currently completing a book manuscript on fifties and sixties American literature and culture that includes a chapter on Joseph Heller. -----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:By Joseph Heller:Something Happened (1974)By others:The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek (1921)Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1932)The Gallery by John Horne Burns (1947)The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (1948)The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney (1950)From Here to Eternity by James Jones (1951)Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor (1952)Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1954)The Organization Man by William H Whyte (1956)On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)The Thin Red Line by James Jones (1962)Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth (1969)Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty (1996)Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996)The Sellout by Paul Beatty (2015)-----LINKSInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationThe Burgess Foundation's free Substack newsletterThe theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, we’re learning about The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury, with our guest Joseph Williams.The History Man tells the story of Howard Kirk, a sociology professor at a modern campus university. Howard is a strident and radical political voice on campus who dominates both his fellow lecturers and his students with his opinions and encourages sit-ins and protests for all manner of causes. Howard is also morally compromised: he has affairs with his female students while simultaneously bullying his male students, and his frequent lies destroy his colleagues’ careers even as they bring him success. Burgess calls The History Man ‘a disturbing and accurate portrayal of campus life in the late sixties and early seventies.’Malcolm Bradbury was born in 1932. He wrote six novels, of which The History Man is the most well-known, having been adapted for the screen in 1981. He also wrote a novella, a collection of short stories, several well-respected books of literary criticism and many scripts for television. He also set up the famous MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, which launched the careers of Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro among others. He was knighted for services to literature in 2000 and died the same year at the age of 68.Joseph Williams is finishing a PhD at the University of East Anglia, researching the creative, critical and educational work of Malcolm Bradbury, Lorna Sage, David Lodge, and the journal Critical Quarterly. He has taught at UEA and now teaches for the Workers Educational Association, most recently a course on Ulysses. As a reviewer he has written for Literary Review, The Times Literary Supplement, the Spectator, and Tribune, and in 2023 he was appointed reviews editor at Critical Quarterly. -----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Malcolm Bradbury:Eating People is Wrong (1959)Stepping Westward (1965)The Social Context of Modern English Literature (1971)The Modern American Novel (1983)The Modern World: Ten Great Writers (1988)The Modern British Novel (1993)By others:Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)Loving by Henry Green (1945)The Great Tradition by F.R. Leavis (1948)Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1954)The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis (1973)Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975)Gossip from the Forest by Thomas Keneally (1975)Changing Places by David Lodge (1975)How Far Can You Go? by David Lodge (1980)Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)Money by Martin Amis (1984)Small World by David Lodge (1984)White Noise by Don DeLillo (1985)Nice Work by David Lodge (1988)The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)-----LINKSInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationBurgess Foundation NewsletterThe theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, we’re exploring the complex, controversial and language-rich novel Darconville’s Cat by Alexander Theroux with our guest, writer George Salis.The novel tells the story of Alaric Darconville, an English instructor at an all-girls’ college in Virginia. He is intensely romantic and intellectual, and eventually falls in love with one of his students. He views their relationship as a great love affair, but his romanticism blinds him to reality. Eventually, he meets the mysterious Dr Crucifer, an unrepentant misogynist who attempt to brainwash the younger man to his way of thinking.Alexander Theroux was born in Massachusetts in 1939, and is the author of four novels, four collections of poetry, three collections of short stories and several works of non-fiction. His most recent publication is the collection of poetry, Godfather Drosselmeier’s Tears & Other Poems. George Salis is a novelist, literary critic and editor. His novel Sea Above, Sun Below was praised by Alexander Theroux as having ‘electricity on every page’. He is the editor of The Colliderscope, an online publication that celebrates innovative literature, and the host of its companion podcast. He has recently completed his maximalist novel Morphological Echoes.-----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Alexander TherouxThree Wogs, including 'Theroux Metaphrastes' (1972)Laura Warholic (2007)By others:Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)Girls at Play by Paul Theroux (1969)Plus by Joseph McElroy (1977)Love in a Dead Language by Lee Siegel (1999)-----LINKSSea Above, Sun Below by George Salis at AmazonThe Collidescope, George Salis's websiteThe Collidescope PodcastInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationThe theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, Graham Foster discovers Nadine Gordimer’s 1966 novel The Late Bourgeois World, with guest Jeanne-Marie Jackson.The Late Bourgeois World tells the story of Johannesburg suburbanite Liz Van Den Sandt, who finds out her ex-husband has committed suicide after betraying his comrades in the burgeoning rebellion against apartheid. Though she lives a privileged life with her new partner, she begins to feel drawn towards political action. When she is asked to help the Black Nationalist movement with their finances, she has to choose between her own safe but boring life and the exciting but risky act of rebellion. But does her ex-husband’s failure prove the futility of political action?Nadine Gordimer was born in the Transvaal region of South Africa in 1923. She moved to Johannesburg in 1948 and lived in the city for the rest of her life. She published her first novel, The Lying Days, in 1953 and went on to publish 14 more novels and over 20 books of short stories. Gordimer won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. She died in 2014.Jeanne-Marie Jackson is Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. Her research focusses on African literature and intellectual history. Her first book, South African Literature’s Russian Soul: Narrative Forms of Global Isolation was published by Bloomsbury in 2015. Her most recent book, The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing was published by Princeton University Press in 2021. She has written for the New York Times, New Left Review, and The Conversation, among others. Her latest book, as editor, is a critical edition of J.E. Casely Hayford’s Ethiopia Unbound.-----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Nadine Gordimer:The Lying Days (1953)Burger's Daughter (1979)July's People (1981)'Living in the Interregnum' in The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics and Places (1988)By others:Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (1862)The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)The Ripley Series by Patricia Highsmith (1955-91)The Necessity of Art by Ernst Fischer (1959)Muriel at Metropolitan by Miriam Tlali (1975)Edith's Diary by Patricia Highsmith (1977)Amandla by Miriam Tlali (1980)Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (1999)The Theory of Flight by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (2018)The History of Man by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (2019)The Quality of Mercy by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (2022)-----LINKSSouth African Literature’s Russian Soul: Narrative Forms of Global Isolation by Jeanne-Marie JacksonThe African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing by Jeanne-Marie JacksonInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationThe Burgess Foundation's free Substack newsletter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, Andrew Biswell talks to Brian Boyd about Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire, which Anthony Burgess called ‘a brilliant confection’.Pale Fire is unlike any other novel. The first section of the novel takes the form of a 999-line poem, by a murdered poet called John Shade. The second section concerns the discursive commentary and notes by Shade’s supposed editor, Charles Kinbote. Seemingly unconnected to the poem, Kinbote’s notes describe his belief that he is Charles the Beloved, the exiled king of a country called Zembla. Can this be true, or is Kinbote a fantasist? Does Shade’s poem really reference the revolution in Zembla? Is Shade even real? These are just some of the questions raised by this rich and puzzling novel.Vladimir Nabokov was born in St Petersburg in 1899, and being of aristocratic heritage, was exiled from Russia when the Bolsheviks seized power. Having studied in Britain, he settled in America in 1940, lecturing in Russian literature at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Cornell University in New York State. His novel Lolita, published in 1955, brought him fame, and was filmed by Stanley Kubrick, from Nabokov’s own screenplay, in 1962. Nabokov died in Switzerland in 1977.Brian Boyd is University Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and one of the leading experts in Nabokov’s work. His writings about Nabokov include Nabokov’s Ada: The Place of Consciousness, Nabokov’s Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery, and two volumes of biography subtitled The Russian Years and The American Years. He is currently working on a biography of the philosopher Karl Popper, along with a follow-up to his On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction; a book on Shakespeare’s plays; two books on Lolita; and a continuation of his annotations, a chapter at a time, to Ada, already almost 2500 pages, with about 500 to go. He is also co-editing Nabokov’s Lectures on Russian Poetry, Prose, and Drama.-----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Vladimir Nabokov:The Defense (1930)Lolita (1955)Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969)Transparent Things (1972)'The Vane Sisters' in The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (1995)By others:Gradus ad Parnassum by Johann Joseph Fux (1725)Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)The Joy of Gay Sex by Edmund White (1977)A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk (2015)-----LINKSNabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery by Brian Boyd (affiliate link)International Anthony Burgess FoundationInternational Anthony Burgess Foundation NewsletterThe theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Andrew Biswell explores Anthony Burgess’s new collection of essays on music, The Devil Prefers Mozart, with editor Paul Phillips.The Devil Prefers Mozart is the first collection of Anthony Burgess’s essays on music and musicians. This wide-ranging anthology covers classical, modern and operatic works, as well as jazz, pop, heavy metal and punk. This episode of the podcast discusses the versatility of Burgess’s writing on music, the different sorts of essays in the new collection and what Burgess really thought of the work of the Beatles.Paul Phillips is the Gretchen B. Kimball Director of Orchestral Studies and Associate Professor of Music at Stanford University, and author A Clockwork Counterpoint: The Music and Literature of Anthony Burgess, the definitive study of Burgess’s music and its relationship to his writing. Paul has contributed essays to six books on Burgess, including the Norton Critical Edition of A Clockwork Orange, and is an Honorary Patron of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation and its Music Advisor.-----LINKSThe Devil Prefers Mozart: On Music and Musicians by Anthony Burgess, edited by Paul Phillips at CarcanetThe Clockwork Counterpoint: The Music and Literature of Anthony Burgess by Paul Phillips (affiliate link)International Anthony Burgess FoundationAnthony Burgess News, our free weekly Substack newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Andrew Biswell talks to writer and publisher Richard Cohen about his memories of working with Anthony Burgess in the 1980s.Richard Cohen is the former publishing director of Hutchinson, and was instrumental in publishing some of Burgess’s best known novels of the 1980s, beginning with The Pianoplayers in 1986. After working at Hutchinson, Richard moved to Hodder, and eventually set up his own company Richard Cohen Books. During his time in publishing he worked with authors as varied as Jeffrey Archer, John Le Carre, Kingsley Amis, Fay Wheldon. Sebastian Faulks, and Rudy Giuliani.As a writer, Richard has published four books of non-fiction: By the Sword, a history of swordplay; Chasing the Sun, an epic history of the Sun; How to Write Like Tolstoy, a guide for writers; and Making History, a history of historians from Herodotus to the present day.Richard was also an Olympic fencer, competing in Munich, Montreal and Los Angeles between 1972 and 1984. He won both a gold and bronze medal for fencing at the 1970 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.-----LINKSMaking History: Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past by Richard Cohen (affiliate link)By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen (affiliate link)Chasing the Sun: The Epic Story of the Star that Gives Us Life by Richard Cohen (affiliate link)How to Write Like Tolstoy by Richard Cohen (affiliate link)International Anthony Burgess FoundationSubscribe to the Burgess Foundation's free newsletter for weekly news, event listings and writing by and about Anthony Burgess. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Andrew Biswell exploring the making of the new documentary film, A Clockwork Orange: The Prophecy, with the directors Elisa Mantin and Benoit Felici.A Clockwork Orange: The Prophecy, is the first new documentary to focus on Burgess for 25 years. Drawing on archive footage, startling new animations, and interviews with major cultural figures such as Will Self and Ai Weiwei, this documentary reconsiders the 60-year history of A Clockwork Orange as a novel, film, stage play and cultural influence.LINKS:To watch the French version, Orange méchanique: les rouages de la violence, click here.To watch the German version, Clockwork Orange: Im Räderwerk der Gewalt, click here.International Anthony Burgess FoundationSign up to our free newsletter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we hand the microphone over to Anthony Burgess himself, as he gives a special festive reading of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of our listeners! We'll be back in 2024 with more podcasts.For more information about Anthony Burgess and to find out how you can support the work of the Burgess Foundation, visit our website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we’re exploring a parallel universe Glasgow as we talk about Alasdair Gray’s Lanark with writer and biographer Rodge Glass.Lanark is a strange, experimental book that immediately thrusts the reader into a weird world with glimmers of familiarity. It’s a novel with two stories, that weave around each other but don’t quite come together in an obvious way. It begins with the story of a man called Lanark, whose lonely existence in the city of Unthank is eventually disturbed when his skin begins to grow dragon scales. This story is interrupted by that of Duncan Thaw, who remembers his journey to become an artist, studying at the Glasgow School of Art and struggling to get by painting murals around the city. What, if anything, is the connection between Thaw and Lanark?Alasdair Gray was born in Riddrie, Glasgow in 1934. He began studying at the Glasgow School of Art in 1953, where he started writing Lanark. He graduated in 1957 and painted murals around Glasgow. Many of his murals have been lost, but some  can still be seen around the city. Most famously, his mural at the Òran Mór theatre is the largest public artwork in Scotland. Alongside his career as an artist he wrote nine novels, five collections of short stories, and several works for the theatre. He died in 2019.Rodge Glass is the author of seven published books across fiction, the graphic novel, the short story and nonfiction, including Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography, which won a Somerset Maugham Award for Nonfiction, and his new book Michel Faber: The Writer & his Work, published by Liverpool University Press in August 2023. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and was the Convener of the 2nd International Alasdair Gray Conference hosted in Glasgow in 2022. He works closely with the Alasdair Gray Archive on creative commissions, academic work and on building Gray's legacy internationally.-----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Alasdair Gray:'The Star' in Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983)1982, Janine (1984)The Fall of Kelvin Walker (1985)Poor Things (1992)A Life in Pictures (2009)By others:Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1651)'The Crystal Egg' in The Country of the Blind and Other Selected Stories by HG Wells (1897)Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography by Rodge Glass (2009)-----LINKSAlasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography by Rodge Glass (affiliate link)Michel Faber: The Writer & His Work by Rodge Glass (affiliate link)The Alasdair Gray ArchiveInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationThe theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.-----If you’ve enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe and review wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, Graham Foster explores pre-civil rights America in Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man, with writer and academic Sterling L. Bland Jr.Invisible Man follows a nameless black narrator, from his early life as a student of an all-black college based on the Tuskegee Institute, through his expulsion and move to New York where he takes up a series of low status jobs before he falls in with a radical political group called The Brotherhood and takes part in a race riot in Harlem. The novel is part bildungsroman, part satire, and full of literary allusion, allegory and rich imagery. It’s also an impassioned commentary on the black experience in an America marked by segregation, inequality and racism.Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma in 1914. He discovered the power of literature at the Tuskegee Institute, even though he left before graduating. In 1936, he moved to New York, meeting writers Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. Invisible Man was the only novel published in his lifetime, though he also published two volumes of essays. Since his death in 1994, his second, unfinished, novel was published in 1999 under the title Juneteenth. A longer version of this novel was published in 2010 under the title Three Days Before the Shooting… There have also been two further volumes of essays, a collection of short stories, and two selections of his letters.Sterling Lecater Bland, Jr. is a professor in the departments of English, Africana Studies, and American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. He is the author of Voices of the Fugitives: Runaway Slave Stories and Their Fictions of Self-Creation and Understanding Nineteenth Century Slave Narratives. He has written extensively about Ralph Ellison and contributed essays to books such as Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ralph Ellison, and Ralph Ellison in Context. His most recent book is In the Shadow of Invisibility: Ralph Ellison and the Promise of American Democracy.-----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Ralph Ellison:Shadow and Act: Essays (1964)Going to the Territory: Essays (1986)Juneteenth (1999), also published in a longer form as Three Days Before the Shooting... (2010)By others:The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884)Light in August by William Faulkner (1932)Native Son by Richard Wright (1940)The Mansion by William Faulkner (1959)The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1970)Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead (1999)-----LINKSIn the Shadow of Invisibility: Ralph Ellison and the Promise of American Democracy by Sterling L. Bland Jr. (affiliate link)Ralph Ellison FoundationInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationThe theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, Will Carr explores the world of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time with writer and academic Nicholas Birns.A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume roman-fleuve following fifty years in the life of the narrator Nick Jenkins from his schooldays in the 1920s through the Second World War to his later years at the beginning of the 1970s.Anthony Powell was born in Westminster, London in 1905. As well as the twelve volumes of A Dance to the Music of Time, he wrote seven further novels, four volumes of memoir, several plays and various works of non-fiction. He died in 2000, aged 94.Nicholas Birns is on the faculty of New York University, where he teaches contemporary world literature in English. His most recent book is The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel which he co-edited with Louis Klee. His first book Understanding Anthony Powell appeared in 2004 and he is a founding member of the Anthony Powell Society.-----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEDavid Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1867)The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (1906-21)Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust (1913-27)Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh (1928)Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh (1930)The Malayan Trilogy by Anthony Burgess (1956-9)Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame (1957)Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White (1961)Alms for Oblivion by Simon Raven (1964-76)The Novel Now by Anthony Burgess (1967)The Novels of Anthony Powell by Robert K Morris (1968)Invitation to Dance: A Handbook to Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time by Hilary Spurling (1977)The Novels of Anthony Powell by James Tucker (1977)The Harpur and Iles Series by Bill James (1985-2019)The Lampitt Chronicles by A.N. Wilson (1988-96)The Night Soldiers Series by Alan Furst (1988-2019)The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud (2006)Dance Class: American High-School Students Encounter Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time compiled by John A Gould (2009) -----LINKSUnderstanding Anthony Powell by Nicholas BirnsNicholas Birns on Twitter and InstagramThe Anthony Powell SocietyInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationThe theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective.----- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, Graham Foster assesses the dystopian threats of Rex Warner's 1942 novel The Aerodrome. Writer and academic Joseph Darlington guides us through Warner’s politics, his representations of England and whether or not the novel is truly a dystopia.The Aerodrome is set in a nameless but idyllic rural village, where the inhabitants live rough but blameless lives attending church, frequenting the pub and enjoying village fetes. But on a hill overlooking the village, a mysterious militaristic aerodrome has been constructed, and threatens to overwhelm the entire countryside. Our hero Roy, disillusioned with village life, attempts to resist the lure of the Air-Vice Marshall, a charismatic leader who promises order and excitement.Rex Warner was born in Birmingham in 1905, and was a renowned classicist, writer, poet and translator. He attended Wadham College, Oxford, where he became friends with W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. During the 1930s he developed strong anti-fascist beliefs, something reflected in his first three novels: The Wild Goose Chase, The Professor, and The Aerodrome. He wrote seven further novels, three books of poetry, and  many volumes of non-fiction including translations from Ancient Greek and Latin. His translation of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War for Penguin Classics sold over a million copies, and is still in print today. He died in 1973.Joseph Darlington is the author of The Experimentalists, published by Bloomsbury, a collective biography of British experimental novelists of the 1960s. He is also the author of the novel The Girl Beneath the Ice, published by Northodox, and the co-editor of the Manchester Review of Books.--------BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Rex Warner:The Wild Goose Chase (1937)The Professor (1938)Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (translation, 1954)By others;Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke (1790)The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (1886)The Castle by Franz Kafka (1926)Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)Quack! Quack! by Leonard Woolf (1935)Swastika Night by Katherine Burdekin (1937)The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell (1937)Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)1985 by Anthony Burgess (1978)The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)The Mushroom Jungle: A History of Postwar Paperback Publishing by Steve Holland (1993)The Mortmere Stories by Christopher Isherwood and Edward Upward (1994)The Wall by John Lanchester (2019)The Death of H.L. Hix by H.L. Hix (2021)-------LINKSThe Experimentalists by Joseph Darlington at BloomsburyJoseph Darlington on TwitterInternational Anthony Burgess Foundation------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, we’re discussing the bawdy, gluttonous and flatulent Falstaff by Robert Nye, with writer and academic, Rob Spence.Falstaff is a masterpiece of obscene excess. Telling the story of the medieval knight Sir John Fastolf, reportedly the model for Shakespeare’s famous rake Falstaff, Nye’s novel is split into 100 chapters, and goes from Fastolf’s conception on the penis of the Cerne Abbas Giant to his death at the age of 81. It’s a novel Burgess calls Rabelaisian, saying it is a ‘bold venture and an indication of what the novel can do when it frees itself from the constraints of the Jamesian tradition.’Robert Nye was an award-winning poet, novelist and critic, whose work was often inspired by his deep knowledge and love of literature. As a novelist, his work includes novels about Merlin, Faust, Lord Byron, and the companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc, Gilles de Rais. Born in London, he settled in Cork, Ireland, where he died in 2016.Rob Spence is a retired academic. He has published on a range of modern and contemporary authors, including Anthony Burgess, Robert Nye, Ford Madox Ford, Louis de Bernieres, Wyndham Lewis and Penelope Fitzgerald.-----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Robert Nye:Beowulf: A New Telling (1968)Merlin (1978)Faust (1980)The Memoirs of Lord Byron (1989)The Life and Death of My Lord Gilles de Rais (1990)By others:Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (c. 1592)Henry IV (Parts One and Two) by William Shakespeare (c. 1597-99)Henry V by William Shakespeare (c. 1599)The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare (1602)The Tempest by William Shakespeare (c. 1610)Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (1759-67)Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton (1941)The Great Tradition by F.R. Leavis (1948)The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (1960)Nothing Like the Sun by Anthony Burgess (1964)Beyond the Words: Eleven Writers in Search of a New Fiction, ed. by Giles Gordon (1975)A Long Trip to Tea Time by Anthony Burgess (1976)Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess (1980)Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess (1993)Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (1997)-----LINKSRob Spence OnlineGuardian obituary of Robert NyeInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationThe theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective.-----If you’ve enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, Andrew Biswell explores Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel A Single Man. Guiding him through the novel is Isherwood's authorised biographer and editor of his letters and diaries, Katherine Bucknell.A Single Man tells the story of George, an English professor living in suburban Los Angeles and grieving the death of his lover, Jim. Set over one day, the novel is a deeply moving study of grief and a sensitive portrait of the aftermath of a committed gay relationship, published at a time when notions such as same-sex marriage were controversial and prohibited by law.Christopher Isherwood was born near Stockport, England, in 1904. In 1929, he travelled to Berlin with W.H. Auden, which provided material for a sequence of novels, most notably Goodbye to Berlin, which was the basis for the hit musical Cabaret. Isherwood emigrated to the United States in 1939, first to New York with Auden, and then to California. In 1953, he met Don Bachardy and they formed a lifelong relationship. Isherwood died in 1986.Katherine Bucknell is a biographer, editor and novelist. She has edited three volumes of Isherwood’s diaries, and The Animals, a volume of letters between Isherwood and Bachardy, which is also the basis of a podcast hosted by Katherine. Her novels include Leninsky Prospekt, Canarino, What You Will, and +1. She is the founder of the W.H. Auden Society and the director of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. She is currently working on a major new biography of Christopher Isherwood.------BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Christopher Isherwood:Goodbye to Berlin (1939)Prater Violet (1945)Down There on a Visit (1962)A Meeting by the River (1967)Christopher and His Kind (1976)By others:Bhagavad Vita (c. 200 BCE)The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1879-80)Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy (1911)Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham (1944)------LINKSChristopher Isherwood: Diaries, Volume One: 1939-1960 (edited by Katherine Bucknell) at Blackwells (affiliate link)The Animals: Love Letters Between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (edited by Katherine Bucknell) at Blackwells (affiliate link)Katherine Bucknell's WebsiteThe Christopher Isherwood FoundationInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationThe theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, we’re donning our snap-brim fedoras and trench-coats to investigate The Long Good-bye by Raymond Chandler with our special guest biographer Tom Williams.The Long Good-bye is Raymond Chandler’s sixth novel, and features the further adventures of his most famous creation, private detective Philip Marlowe. After being contacted by his friend, Terry Lennox, Marlowe finds himself embroiled in the aftermath of the murder of Lennox’s wife, Sylvia. Seemingly an open-and-shut case, the mystery surrounding her death grows, and Marlowe traverses Los Angeles in search of answers from a range of oddballs and criminals.Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and grew up in Ireland and London. He worked as a civil servant and a journalist in London. In 1912 he returned to America. He introduced the world to Philip Marlowe in his 1939 novel The Big Sleep, and six further novels. He died in 1959.Tom Williams is a biographer and writer. He was born in Newcastle and read English at University College in London. He has worked in publishing and publishing technology and, in 2012, wrote A Mysterious Something in the Light: A Biography of Raymond Chandler. He currently lives in Washington DC.-----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Raymond Chandler:The Big Sleep (1939)Farewell My Lovely (1940)Playback (1958)Poodle Springs (with Robert B. Parker, 1989)Philip Marlowe Novels:The Black-Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black/John Banville (2014)Only to Sleep by Lawrence Osborne (2018)The Goodbye Coast by Joe Ide (2022) By others:The Perry Mason Series by Erle Stanley Gardner (1933-73)Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (1949)Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)Collected Poems by TS Elliot (1963)Cocksure by Mordecai Richler (1968)Bomber by Len Deighton (1970)Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)The Inspector Rebus Series by Ian Rankin (1987-2022)Black and Blue by Ian Rankin (1997)Christine Falls by Benjamin Black/John Banville (2006)The Slough House/Jackson Lamb Series by Mick Herron (2010-22)The Cormoran Strike Series by Robert Galbraith/JK Rowling (2013-22)-----LINKSA Mysterious Something in the Light: Raymond Chandler, A Life by Tom Williams (affiliate link)Tom Williams on Twitter and InstagramInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationThe theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.In this episode, Graham Foster discovers Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, with poet, translator, editor and literary titan, Michael Schmidt.Under the Volcano traces Geoffrey Firmin’s last day. It's set on the Day of the Dead festival in 1938, during which Firmin is visited by his wife and his brother, who offer the possibility of salvation from his alcoholic decline. As the trio spend the day together, their uneasy alliance is threatened by Firmin’s drinking, his suspicions, and his desire to vanish into the Mexican countryside. As events unfold it quickly becomes apparent that Firmin has no interest in saving himself.Malcolm Lowry was born on the Wirral in 1909. At eighteen, he left home to work at sea, which inspired his novel Ultramarine (1933). After gaining a degree from Cambridge and after the breakdown of his first marriage, he crossed the Atlantic and explored the United States, Mexico and Canada. He died in 1957.Michael Schmidt is a poet, literary historian, translator and editor. His most recent book of poems, Talking to Stanley on the Telephone, appeared in 2021. His major critical undertakings include Lives of the Poets (1999), The First Poets: Lives of the Ancient Greek poets (2005), The Novel: a Biography (2014) and Gilgamesh: the Life of a Poem (2019). Michael is founder, editor, and managing director of Carcanet Press and general editor of PN Review. He is currently a Professor of Poetry at the University of Manchester.-----BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBy Malcolm Lowry:Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry (1962)By others:The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (c. 1321)Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners by John Bunyan (1606)Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais (trans. by Thomas Urquhart, 1653)Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)Three Lives by Gertrude Stein (1909)'The Dead' in Dubliners by James Joyce (1914)Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)The Plumed Serpent by D.H. Lawrence (1926)Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (1940)Family Sayings by Natalia Ginzburg (1963)-----LINKSTalking to Stanley on the Telephone by Michael Schmidt (affiliate link)The Novel: A Biography by Michael Schmidt (affiliate link)Carcanet PressPN ReviewInternational Anthony Burgess FoundationThe theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.