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A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian novella written by Anthony Burgess and published in 1962. It is an exploration of human violence and human free will to choose between good and evil and the cost to the individual of restraining it. Set in a not-so-distant future society that has a culture of extreme youth violence, it is a first-person narration by the novel's teenage anti-hero about his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. It can be seen as a satire of rebellious and violent trends in youth culture that were prevalent in the 1960s. It is also an experiment with language, written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Nadsat".
According to Burgess, the novel was a jeu d'esprit written in just three weeks.
In 2005, A Clockwork Orange was included on Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923,[1] and it was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The original manuscript of the book is located at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada since that institution purchased the documents in 1971.
