It took me a while to read this book because the violence mentioned by people who read it. The first part is very hard to read and it took some time to get used to the language but I guess the language actually helped to soften the effect of all the violence. It actually became interesting in part 2 and really really good in part 3. I am conflicted about the last chapter that was not included in the original American edition. I think the last chapter is a way for the author to come to a conclusion and show that violence is not all that and one may grow out of it. Is it better with or without? As a book I do think it might be better without. ( )

This book is probably a classic, and one that I think a lot of people should read. But before we delve into the book itself, I’d just like to point out that Anthony Burgess used to live in Malta and that he left because the clergy pissed him off, and if that isn’t one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard I don’t know what is.

I’m sure you must have heard of the movie, and if you haven’t you should really get onto watching that movie. I must warn you though, it will ruin the song ‘Singing in the Rain’ for you forever, as it did to me.

The main character, Alex, is a youth (I would say not even in his twenties yet) who lives in a version of the United Kingdom (I think it might be London, but correct me if I’m wrong) that has been taken over by some kind of Soviet power. The basic idea here is that, in a dystopian future where Russia became a major world power (or rather the USSR), England became a place that adopted some rather strange words into their vocabulary that, upon further inspection, you can see to be coming from Russian origin.

Alex is a very violent and troubled youth who seems to find no problems with rape, drug use, attacking people for sport, and other activities that you would associate with gangs. In fact, he is the leader of a gang of ruffians – 3 of his so-called friends who follow him and his orders. He takes pride in this, and throughout the first part of the book is seen to revel in the violence that he sows around him. However, Alex soon falls victim to the law, and becomes part of a program designed to rehabilitate people like him into society by removing their need to commit violent acts.

This book really zeroes in on the issues of free will and society put together, taking it to the extreme and showing us what happens when we try to change human nature, or if it really can ever change. Alex is a brilliant character, and we’re lucky that we get all of the story in the first-person, meaning that we’re privy to his thoughts, desires, and plans. He may not be a very likable character in terms of morality, but you do end up liking him because he’s just such a damn good sweet talker sometimes. I really enjoyed reading it, even though I did need the help of the glossary sometimes to make sense of the vaguely-Russian-inspired words in the text. The movie adaptation is also spot on, keeping most of the original elements of the story in place and even keeping the ending firmly there.

Definitely my final rating has to be a 4/5. ( )

I speak Polish and once learned a bit of Russian, so I had no trouble understanding nadsat for the most part. The point of it, I think, is to anchor Alex’s youth, what with each generation having its own slang that the generations before and after struggle to understand. Although you’re led to empathise with Alex a great deal, the degree of separation nadsat maintains is greater than the reader being real and Alex being a fictional character; I truly got the feeling, at the end, of being immersed in the reading of the memoir of a real person much younger than myself, me only being 22. I felt the generational rift between us! If there are any reader surrogates in this book, they’re the political types who take to imposing their ideas about themes onto our humble narrator.

I even found nadsat infectious, as slang often is, suddenly thinking of what Netflix series I should viddy and how I’d keep my rookers warm in this grahzny bastard winter. Drives my ptitsa bezoomny, all but scratching her gulliver. ( )

4.25/5 ( )

Anthony Burgess escribió su distopía atemporal “La naranja mecánica” (1962), después de dos eventos determinantes: un doctor le diagnosticó por error un tumor terminal. Además, su esposa embarazada sufrió un altercado violento con militares en las calles de Londres.
Ante tales circunstancias, pensó en lo mejor que podía hacer: aprovechar el tiempo. Desarrolló la historia de Alex, un joven violento y amante de la música de Beethoven; gusta de beber leche alterada con su pandilla antes de ejercer lo que ellos llaman la “ultraviolencia”.
Alex le habla al lector directamente, describiendo primero las atrocidades cometidas, como violaciones, robos y peleas con otras bandas; más adelante, narra sobre el radical y revolucionario tratamiento al que se verá sometido para “curar” su naturaleza violenta.
Será en el epílogo, (ese famoso capítulo 21 que se suprimió en la primera versión publicada en Norteamérica) en donde el autor impregne de esperanza a su obra. Para Burgess, cualquier delincuente tiene la capacidad de redimirse o, como en el caso de su protagonista, de sentirse aburrido de la existencia nihilista y pasar irremediablemente a la posterior madurez.
Es triste y desconcertante, pero la novela es menos conocida y valorada que la película de Kubrick, a pesar de lo diferentes que resultan en su esencia. En la narración literaria, Burgess se da el lujo de crear un dialecto “rusificado” del inglés llamado Nadsat, lo que provoca una experiencia lingüística impredecible y emocionante.
Las detalladas descripciones de los actos violentos que cometen Alex y sus drugos, son sólo el comienzo de un descenso a la introspección psicológica de un personaje tan enigmático como infame. El discurso de “La naranja mecánica” es brutalmente actual, una mezcla distópica de psicoanálisis, delincuencia juvenil, corrupción y tecnología. Al final, Burgess no perdía la fe en la naturaleza humana, a diferencia de Kubrick. ( )