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A Clockwork Orange

Alex, fifteen, and his three friends treat robbery, rape, torture, and murder as entertainment. After he is jailed, the state sets out to reform him.

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One of Esquire's 50 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time “A brilliant novel.… [A] savage satire on the distortions of the single and collective minds.”― New York Times

In Anthony Burgess’s influential nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, a teen who talks in a fantastically inventive slang that evocatively renders his and his friends’ intense reaction against their society. Dazzling and transgressive, A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil and the meaning of human freedom. This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition, and Burgess’s introduction, “A Clockwork Orange Resucked.”

6 illustrations

First published: 1962
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Pages: 240
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Book tags

Satire

Content warnings

No content warnings are recorded. Missing warnings do not mean the book is warning-free.

Horror profile

Scary: Not rated
Creepy: Not rated
Gore: Not rated
Disturbing: Not rated
Weird: Not rated

How we calculate this

These are editorial estimates of intensity, informed by reading and review evidence, then checked before publication. They aren't star ratings, reader-vote averages or a measure of quality.

Each dimension runs from 1 (low) to 5 (exceptionally intense). A 5 is reserved for strongly consistent evidence. People experience horror differently.

Scary: Fear, tension and immediate threat.
Creepy: Unease, dread and an uncanny atmosphere.
Gore: Graphic injury, blood and bodily detail.
Disturbing: Upsetting ideas and lingering psychological impact.
Weird: Surreal, strange and reality-bending elements.

We draw a filled profile only when all five scores have been reviewed. Unrated does not mean mild. Missing scores are not estimated from genre tags or your saved taste. This profile isn't a complete content-warning guide.