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The Complete Enderby
The Complete Enderby
May 10, 2025 9:12 AM

Author:Anthony Burgess

The Complete Enderby

Enderby is a poet, social critic and Catholic. He may be found hiding in the lavatory where much of his best work is composed, or perhaps in Rome, brainwashed into respectability by a glamorous wife, aftershave and the dolce vita. Whether he is pursuing revenge and inspiration in Morocco, expounding on his notorious sex film on a TV chat show, or writing a hit musical based on the life and work of Shakespeare, Enderby emerges triumphant.

Reviews

The Enderby series are even finer comedies than those by Evelyn Waugh

—— Gore Vidal

Ferociously funny and wildly verbally inventive

—— The Times

Burgess is at his most inventive in these books, especially when he gives us the full text of Enderby's songs and sonnets (many of which are laughably bad). Poetry, Burgess seems to conclude, is rather like shitting: it's really about purging oneself of dead matter

—— Andrew Biswell , Observer

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

No less an authority than Harold Bloom rates the Enderby books among the great comic fictions of our time. Certainly Anthony Burgess, that dizzying polymath and flamboyant novelist, never created a more engaging hero than this hapless poet... All in all, these four books, though diverse in tone and character, strikingly exhibit the narrative gusto and linguistic sprezzatura of Anthony Burgess at his best

—— Washington Post

Exhilarating...brilliantly plotted

—— New Statesman

With great panache and assurance, Jon Canter lampoons the pretentions of England's top legal set...this comic tour de force.

—— Emma Hagestadt , Independent

Brilliantly witty

—— Arabella Weir

Jon Canter projects a series of funny, sometimes hilarious, incidents in which the comedy is structured rather than slapstick, verging on the licentious but masterfully avoiding it

—— Times Literary Supplement

'With Frau Szabó, you have caught a golden fish. Buy all of her novels, the ones she is writing and the ones she will write'

—— Herman Hesse

'The Door has been waiting for us from more than sixteen years. It has just opened'

—— Livres Hebdo

'In The Door the Hungarian Magda Szabó cleverly guides her intense and poignant novel, allowing the tension to rise in a crescendo'

—— Madame Figaro

Captures the obsessive and destructive madness of sexual jealousy

—— Psychologies

Roberts deploys her research carefully, honing a novel with a strong period feel and a sprightly structure

—— Independent

An amazing read

—— Latest 7

Roberts’ sharp, evocative prose renders this simple story complex, enthralling and compelling

—— Anne Hill , Sussex Life

This spiky portrait of love makes for a gripping read

—— Emma Hagestadt , Independent Radar

A heartbreaking examination of lives and love

—— Diva Magazine

A powerful story of sexual jealousy and longing, My Policeman is also a heartbreaking examination of lives and love that has gone to waste in an era in which homosexuality was a prosecutable offence

—— DIVA Magazine

A delicious novel by an experienced author who captures the scientific atmosphere of the early 19th century with a devastating study of infidelity

—— Colin Gardiner , Oxford Times

The real life players of the Napoleonic era spring to life

—— i

Compelling

—— Big Issue

Highly assured and almost educational with its broad sweep of history

—— Jane Housham , Guardian

Tillyard’s achievement is in this original portray log the Regency era and its relevance to our own time

—— Philippa Williams , The Lady

a very human tale about passion, secrets and lies.

—— Reading Matters

An achingly brilliant piece of writing on passion and delusion. It's a pleasure to read from start to finish and reignites our love for fiction

—— Independent
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