Little Wilson and Big God
By (Author) Anthony Burgess
Vintage Publishing
Vintage Classics
1st November 2002
3rd October 2002
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000
823.914
Winner of J.R. Ackerley Prize 1988
Paperback
480
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 28mm
330g
Little Wilson and Big God, the first part of Anthony Burgess's two-volume autobiography, tells the story of a disaffected Manchester Catholic from his birth in 1917 up to the commencement, in 1959, of his career as a professional writer. Born Jack Wilson, the son of Catholic Irish and Lancashire parents, Burgess grew up in one of the toughest areas of Manchester, with a burgeoning awareness of an artistic talent which for a long time could not find its proper outlet. It deals also with an unending struggle to reconcile a Catholic conscience with the prematurely discovered pleasures of sex. It details his tempestuous first marriage, an army career more comic than heroic, and his years as an education officer in Malaya and Borneo. It was in the Far East, at the age of thirty-seven, his marriage in trouble, drinking heavily, that Burgess began to write the first of the novels that were to make his name.
Packed, provocative and masterly -- Sebastian Faulks
Like the best of Burgess' novels, the book has terrific pace and vivacity... It is the story of a sort of Unlucky Jim * LA Times *
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.