You've Had Your Time

Second volume of Anthony Burgess's autobiography. Taking up where Little Wilson and Big God left off, You've Had Your Time is the second volume of Anthony Burgess's autobiography. It begins in 1959, with the author's return from Brunei, and the start of a long and prolific writing career, and ends, somewhat arbitrarily, in 1982, with the centenary celebrations of the birth of James Joyce, which prompt Burgess to certain conclusions about the relationship between literature and life. Full of extraordinary vignettes (Borges and Burgess conducting a conversation in Anglo-Saxon, for example), as rich, varied and hectic as the nomadic literary life it describes, this is the astonishingly frank autobiography of an extraordinary literary genius. Rarely, if ever, has a writer exposed his inner life so completely and rarely has a writer's life been described - by anyone - with such vigour, polymathic humour and linguistic verve. About the Author Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917. He served in the army from 1940 to 1954 before becoming a colonial education officer. It was while he held this post that doctors told him he would die, and he decided to try to live by writing. He achieved a worldwide reputation as one of the leading novelists of his day, and one of the most versitile. His writings include criticism, scripts and translations, and a Broadway musical, and he composed three symphonies which have been publicly performed in the USA. His books have been published all over the world and include A Clockwork Orange, The Clockwork Testament, Inside Mr Enderby, Enderby's Dark Lady, Earthly Powers, Abba Abba and The End of the World News. Anthony Burgess died in 1993.