The Clockwork Condition: lost sequel to A Clockwork Orange discovered

Unfinished manuscript found among Anthony Burgess’s papers was described by the author as ‘a major philosophical statement on the contemporary human condition’

A lost “sequel” to Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, in which the author explores the moral panic that followed the release of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of his novel, has been found among papers he abandoned in his home near Rome in the 1970s.

The unfinished manuscript of The Clockwork Condition was written by Burgess in 1972 and 1973, after Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of A Clockwork Orange was accused of inspiring copycat crimes, and was banned for decades. The 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, Burgess’s most famous work, is set in a dystopian future, where teenager Alex and his gang revel in “ultraviolence” until the state sets about his re-education.

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