A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novel by the English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society with a youth subculture of extreme violence, and the teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his treatment by state authorities intent on reforming him.

The book is partly written in an invented argot influenced by Russian. According to Burgess, it was written in three weeks as a jeu d'esprit, which is worth noting because the language is the element readers find most demanding, so the book's difficulty was not the product of a long period of refinement.

In 2005 it was included on Time magazine's list of the hundred best English-language novels written since 1923, and it was named by the Modern Library and its readers as one of the hundred best English-language novels of the twentieth century. The argot is called Nadsat, and it is built on Russian as well as English slang, which is why the book reads at first like a foreign language. Alex's treatment by the authorities occupies the second half, and the state's method of reforming him is what the novel's argument is really about.