Novels – Page 3 – Interesting Literature

A Summary and Analysis of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

One of the most original and endlessly thought-provoking dystopian novels of the whole twentieth century, A Clockwork Orange (1962) is Anthony Burgess’ best-known novel. But what is the message behind this curious novel?

Stanley Kubrick’s famous 1971 film adaptation of the novel departed from the novel in some respects, so it’s worth offering a brief summary of the plot of A Clockwork Orange before we ponder the meaning of this novel and offer some words of analysis. (We have compiled some curious Anthony Burgess facts here.)

10 Classic Novels about the Middle Ages

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The Middle Ages, especially the period from the Norman Conquest of 1066 in England until the Renaissance in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, has been popular in fiction at least since Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott’s hugely influential historical novel from 1819. Below, we introduce ten of our favourite novels, from over two centuries of the English novel,

Eros in Dystopia: Fred Saberhagen’s Love Conquers All

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a 1970s dystopian novel in which sex has become the new religion

The population of the world has reached 8 billion. Overpopulation and Malthusian fears that the world’s natural resources will run out are very real. Parents are limited to having two children; if a woman falls pregnant with a third, she must have it aborted, and to fail to do so is a crime. The word ‘triplet’ is a curse word, as are ‘purity’ and ‘chastity’. Love is little more than Freudian ‘sublimation’ of sex: an unwholesome and undesirable state. ‘Eros’, too, is a curse word, replacing ‘Jesus Christ’ or ‘God’.

Future Imperfect: Nathaniel Beverley Tucker’s The Partisan Leader

In this special guest post, Dr Peter Templeton discusses a curious nineteenth-century American novel by a forgotten author

Imagine a world in which the South seceded, successfully, from the United States. Virginia, caught in two minds as a border state, is occupied by Federal troops who get caught into a guerrilla war with a band of noble would-be Confederates? This version of history, though it looks like a nightmare to most contemporary eyes, is exactly what Nathaniel Beverley Tucker asks us to picture in his 1836 novel, The Partisan Leader.

One thing needs to be stated upfront –

Starchild’s Play: John Wyndham’s Chocky

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reads a classic story of alien possession by the master of British science fiction

What if your son had an imaginary friend with whom he often conversed, answering questions that nobody had apparently asked, and behaving as though this invisible and seemingly immaterial Other were the most natural thing in the world? Many parents will probably have observed such a thing with their own children.