Earthly Powers

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title Earthly Powers
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Anthony Burgess
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:656
Dimensions(mm): Height 198,Width 129
Category/GenreModern and contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
Classic fiction (pre c 1945)
ISBN/Barcode 9780099468646
ClassificationsDewey:823.914
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Vintage Publishing
Imprint Vintage Classics
Publication Date 6 May 2004
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

Anthony Burgess' epic masterpiece follows the lives of two men who each represent different kinds of earthly power. Kenneth Toomey is an eminent novelist, world-famous homosexual, and a man who has outlived his contemporaries to survive into honoured, bitter, luxurious old age as a celebrity of dubious notoriety. Don Carlo Campanati is a man of God, who rises through the Vatican as a subtle negotiator and shrewd manipulator to become the controversial architect of church revolution and a candidate for sainthood. Through the lives of these two men, related to each other not only by family ties but also by sympathy, genius and a deep common understanding of mankind's frailties, Burgess explores the very essence of power.

Author Biography

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.

Reviews

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