A Dead Man in Deptford

Description

Murder mystery based on the infamous life and death of Christopher Marlowe. 'One of the most productive, imaginative and risk-taking of writers... It is a clever, sexually explicit, fast-moving, full blooded yarn' Irish Times A Dead Man in Deptford re-imagines the riotous life and suspicious death of Christopher Marlowe. Poet, lover and spy, Marlowe must negotiate the pressures placed upon him by theatre, Queen and country. Burgess brings this dazzling figure to life and pungently evokes Elizabethan England.

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.

Legendary intoxication with language and wordplay is very much in evidence as he (Burgess) evokes the raw, freewheeling spirit of the Elizabethan age * The New York Times * The story is intensely true to the surfaces and smells of Elizabethan London, and also Burgess's own final meditation on his great themes, the sexual and artistic impulses, and their end in death. A masterpiece. * The Observer * If you want a Marlowe that breathes and an England that attacks the senses then you will find both in Anthony Burgess's astonishing final novel, A Dead Man in Deptford. * The Times * Burgess's novel moves with relish through fights, blasphemy and buggery to high talk of mathematics and necromancy in Raleigh's alternative think-tank, all written in well-judged pastiche. * The Independent * A fast, funny, flawless recreation * The Week, Hilary Mantel *