To understand Anthony Burgess, you have to take in consideration the whole totalitarianism of his conceptual views upon the art of writing and its relation to reality. Matthews once again allows us to further understand what Burgess is trying to portray. The literay movement of what Burgess was trying to portray is best defined by Matthews begining on page one and neverending.

I attended Catholic schools from 3rd grade through graduate school, and have heard the story of Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt so many times I was worried I might be bored by another version. I was wrong. Burgess's ability to blend historical fact with brilliant style and humor made Moses come alive for me for the first time. Once again writing in verse, Burgess provides an enjoyable read and an excellent history lesson.

If you can get through this confusing leviathan of a slim book, I guarantee you will know more abut the meaning of music. But not only is this full of the familiar verbal pyrotechnics of Anthony Burgess, but an amazingly diverse conflation of genres - all those announced in the baroque title, and yes, even word music to Symphony 40! Intellectually involving and challenging, rather than an emotional or historical novel. The more you know of classical music the more you'll enjoy this sly book. It repays required rereading.

I stumbled across Burgess's autobiography in a mail-order catalogue of remaindered books. _You've Had Your Time_ cost half as much as the shipping and handling, and was read with the kind of joy and guilt one feels when finding a stray twenty-dollar bill in an empty parking lot.

What struck me about Burgess on Burgess is his delight in words---utilitarian words, pretty words, obscene words, latinates, any combination thereof (among his favorites: micturate). He called his art a craft, and loved to show the clockwork behind prose-tricks, how even the most magical books depend heavily on sleight-of-hand. Perhaps the most peculiar aspect of his autobiography is how sketchy it is on the author's life and how detailed it is on words. For him, at least, the two are inseparable.

Anthony Burgess, aspiring composer, is told at 35 that he has an inoperable brain tumor---he will die within a year. He cranks a sheet of paper into a typewriter. Jump a few decades ahead. In 1989 we find him reflecting on Joyce's anniversary, on conversations in Saxon with Borges, on Kubrick's version of _A Clockwork Orange_, and on a bitter scene from a childhood he can't quite call his own.

He wrote over thirty novels, and also adapted, translated, and commented on a dizzying array of subjects. He was very, very funny. He was at his funniest when writing on his life. And yet there is this terrible, self-inflicted sense of failure when he looks back: The last line in his book is both defiant and defeated---time is creeping up on him, he says, and his attitude is not that of a complacent man of letters, but rather that of someone with an awful lot of unfinished business.

Here's the punchline: In-between the completion of the memoir and his death he wrote an additional six books. The last one, a novel in verse, has just come out. Burgess cheated death at the beginning of his literary career and has done so again.

This is a really hard book to rate. On the one hand, the actual execution -- writing, style, structure and so forth -- is great. The voice, that of a retired Roman clerk, is consistent throughout and the take on the Roman Empire and early Christianity is believable and interesting.

On the other hand, the story really fell short for me. As it went on, it became less of a coherent story and more of a list of (mostly dire and unpleasant) events. While at the beginning it seemed that the characters had some relationship to one another and that the story had a point, by the end it all seemed random and arbitrary. I enjoyed the narrator as a character, but I kept expecting his story to tie in with the main story. It never did, and I was left wondering why it was he felt so compelled to tell the story in the first place. As well, the ending fell flat. I was looking for at least one or two of the characters to undergo some change or experience some kind of redemption. Maybe I missed something, but it didn't seem like that happened. As a result, I was left feeling cheated.

I have read five books by Burgess, and I must say that this is not his best, that is not to say that it is a bad book though. In fact, I liked it (as my rating shows). It showed his thorough knowledge of ancient Rome, and Jerueselem. The characters were well portrayed, and both people with, and without great knoweldge of the time will find the book quite enjoyable to read, for its descriptions.
I have two complaints, however, the list of characters grows and grows, until I find myself thoroughly confused. Also, the storyline seems to flow together less and less towards the end, and it seems as if Burgess wanted to finish up the novel, so he just wrote down everything that was supposed to happen, without peicing it together with any sort of transitions.
The book still has its charms, the characters are all very interesting, and the descriptions of the ancient empire are very well written.
In the end, I would say that if you have a strong interest in ancient Rome, you should read this, as it tells history while making it enjoyable. I would not, however, recommend that this be the first book by Burgess that you read, as it is longer, and differently written than almost all his other ones.

Anthony Burgess' profound learning is on display in a fascinating piece of historical fiction, The Kingdom of the Wicked. Picking up just days after the crucifixion of Jesus, we find the founding fathers of Christianity rendered realistically in an often hilarious book. From the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, to the imperial court of the mad Caligula, Burgess' novel takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the Mediterranean during the first century. Though a well-crafted story filled with luminosities of language, it is the historical perspective that is perhaps most rewarding to the reader. Anyone who has spent time reading the Bible or has heard the stories of early Christendom will undoubtedly, unless a scholarly type, have difficulty referencing them in a real way. The various letters of the apostles provide only subservient snippets of the time while Burgess' novel takes us into the very rooms of the apostles as they write and commences on into their minds while monitoring everything from their lustful proclivities to their bowel movements. The learning combined with the lurid language at hand make The Kingdom of the Wicked a marvel. However, the leapfrogging from one story to another leaves the final storyline disjointed and the reader sometimes perplexed. Also, the learning has a darker side for, whereas details are lavishly furnished throughout, sordid specifics of Caligula's court are enough to make most readers turn quickly to the next page. It's enough to make one claim that some history deserves to be buried, but this is Burgess' bold statement to the contrary.

this book waz great. but due to the bizarre climax....it didnt get the 5 stars