British · 1917–1993
Anthony Burgess wrote more than thirty novels, composed symphonies, and produced enough journalism and criticism for several careers. His 1962 dystopia "A Clockwork Orange"—made iconic by Stanley Kubrick's film—invented a slang language and posed unsettling questions about free will and state control. "Earthly Powers" earned a 1980 Booker Prize shortlisting with its panoramic twentieth-century narrative. The British polymath treated literary reputation as beside the point; the work itself was the reward.