A Clockwork Orange

Burgess deliberately built an uncomfortable novel: Alex's nadsat — a slang blending Russian and English — creates both distance and complicity. The central question, whether the state has the right to extirpate free will even when that will is used for evil, is more relevant now than in 1962. Kubrick's adaptation sometimes overshadows the original, but the novel has nuances the film never reached. A genuine literary artefact — not for every stomach.