Dead Man in Deptford

Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917 and educated at Xaverian College and Manchester University. He served in the British army from 1940 to 1946 and was a schoolteacher in England before becoming a colonial education officer in 1954. His Malayan trilogy of novels and a history of English literature were published while he was living in Malaya and Brunei.He became a full-time writer in 1959 and achieved a worldwide reputation as one of the most versatile novelists of his day. His writings include biographies of Shakespeare and Hemingway, critical studies of James Joyce, stage plays, and two volumes of autobiography. His work as a composer and librettist includes the Broadway musical, Cyrano, and Blooms of Dublin, an operetta based on Joyce's Ulysses.His 33 novels continue to be published all over the world. They include A Clockwork Orange, Nothing Like the Sun, The Complete Enderby, Earthly Powers, Napoleon Symphony, and Beard's Roman Women, a collaboration with the photographer David Robinson.Anthony Burgess died in London 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