 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (February 2016) |
 First edition | |
| Author | Anthony Burgess |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Hutchinson |
Publication date | 1980 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 678 pp |
| ISBN | 0-09-143910-8 |
| OCLC | 7016660 |
| 823/.914 19 | |
| LC Class | PR6052.U638 E2 1980b |
Earthly Powers is a panoramic saga novel of the 20th century by Anthony Burgess first published in 1980. It begins with the "outrageously provocative"[1] first sentence: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."
On one level it is a parody of a "blockbuster" novel, with the 81-year-old hero, Kenneth Toomey (allegedly loosely based on British author W. Somerset Maugham),[2] telling the story of his life in 82 chapters. It "summed up the literary, social and moral history of the century with comic richness as well as encyclopedic knowingness", according to Malcolm Bradbury.
The novel appeared on the shortlist for the Booker Prize in the year of its publication but lost out to William Golding's Rites of Passage.[3] In an October 2006 poll in The Observer, it was named joint third for the best work of British and Commonwealth fiction of the last 25 years (along with Ian McEwan's Atonement, Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower, Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled, and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children).[4]
- ^ "An arresting opening". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 29 May 2010. Retrieved 30 August 2012.
- ^ Liukkonen, Petri. "Anthony Burgess". Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 10 March 2008.
- ^ "The Booker Prize 1980". Archived from the original on 16 February 2016., Booker Prize website. Retrieved 5 May 2016.
- ^ Robert McCrum, What's the best novel in the past 37 years?, Guardian, 8 October 2006. Retrieved 18 March 2012.