Customer Reviews

The End of the World News: An Entertainment

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Sigmund Freud discovers the psyche in Vienna, Leon Trotsky discovers the worker's paradise in New York City and America waits for a comet to snuff out all life. Three very different tales spin around and through each other in another masterpiece by one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

Like most Burgess, this is a vastly entertaining book, but you can't just stand back and admire the architecture of this tale. Human characters dealing with super-human problems draw you in to this discussion of the uses of power and the purpose of life.

At first, the interwoven stories jar. You hurry to get back to the interrupted story. What happened next? To whom? But each story blooms, each story comments nimbly on the others and takes its own place in a masterwork by a masterwriter.

Anthony Burgess seems to be dangerously close to being passed over by history. The only book that he is now remembered for is now more likely to be cited as "a Stanley Kubrick film" than "an Anthony Burgess novel," and his many other works have been left to rot in used bookstores. While he's not certainly not the most visionary speculative fiction author of the 20th century, he deserves far more respect than he's received--I fully expect him to be "rediscovered" sometime soon.

I first read "The End of the World News" back in middle school (about ten years ago) and still remember it clearly. His parallel narratives--a future Earth waiting for The End, the waning years of cranky old Freud, and the libretto for a musical about Trotsky's visit to New York--work together beautifully, like a more coherent "Slaughterhouse-Five." Still one of my all-time favorites.

Anthony Burgess has written so many great novels. He is of course most famous for A Clockwork Orange, and that one sotry has overshadowed much of his other terrific work.

This book has three different storylines, including Trotsky and space travel, and its never clear as you read through the chapters how they are related, but the plotlines are captivating. And at the end, he does a masterful job of tying it all together. Simply fascinating.

It will be hard to find this book, but if you do, definitely buy it.

If you enjoyed "A Clockwork Orange" as a literary achievement and for its apocalyptic/dystopic vision, then this is a book for you. Look for it in used-book stores. I'm sure there were a few re-prints of it, so don't give up.

Without going into plot or characters etc, just let me say that this is my second favourite book of all time ( Brideshead Revisited is No.1), it is just so clever. Burgess's work is all clever but this is way out in front.

The ending is a marvel, like it's author.