Earthly Powers

Anthony Burgess · 1917–1993 · England

Why it matters

A closeted, aging novelist recounts eighty years entangled with his brother-in-law, a pope on the road to sainthood, tracing the century's collisions of faith, fascism, and desire. Burgess's most ambitious, formally audacious novel.

At a glance

A dense, digressive, decades-spanning narrative packed with allusion.