John Burgess Wilson, better known to the reading public as Anthony Burgess, is regularly lauded by critics and peers for his imagination, his humor, his varied knowledge and his sheer productivity. Abundantly reflected in Burgess’s fiction is his Roman Catholic background, which is part of an ancient regional and family heritage. Mr. Burgess says, “I was brought up a Catholic, became an agnostic, flirted with Islam and now hold a position which may be …showed first 75 words of 1762 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1762 total…demonstrated a full appreciation of the limits to which the novel can be pushed before ceasing to be a novel and becoming something else. This ambiguous “something else” can be interpreted by several different people to mean several different things, ranging from the very Manichean principles they were written upon to personal metaphors explaining or providing escape from everyday life. It is for this reason that Burgess remains the widely-read success that he is today.