William Heinemann - 1962
192 pages
In a dystopian near-future England, teenage gangs, their members called "droogs", speak a Russified English with some Cockney rhyming slang and Roma and roam the streets at night. One of these such "droogs" is Alex, whose only solace is classical music. Alex gets arrested and is put on a new technique called the "Ludovico Technique", where he is forced to see horrifying images put to the classical music that he so loves.
The book that I read was as it was published in the United Kingdom: with a full twenty-one chapters. The early English versions, including the one that the film is based on, leave out the twenty-first chapter because they felt it had a different tone and American audiences wouldn't like the new version. Twenty or twenty-one chapters, the novella is still wonderful. The Nadsat was difficult to understand at first, and I had to read slowly, but as I went on I got more of it and could pick up the pace and could truly enjoy the book.
Grade: A
One of my favorite books! :-)
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