Book Summary and Reviews of The Wanting Seed (Norton Paperback Fiction) by Anthony Burgess

The Wanting Seed (Norton Paperback Fiction) by Anthony Burgess

The Wanting Seed (Norton Paperback Fiction)

by Anthony Burgess

  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • Dec 1996, 288 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

Set in the near future, The Wanting Seed is a Malthusian comedy about the strange world overpopulation will produce.

Tristram Foxe and his wife, Beatrice-Joanna, live in their skyscraper world where official family limitation glorifies homosexuality. Eventually, their world is transformed into a chaos of cannibalistic dining-clubs, fantastic fertility rituals, and wars without anger. It is a novel both extravagantly funny and grimly serious.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Wildly and fantastically funny... . Here too is all the usual rich exuberance of Mr. Burgesss vocabulary, his love of quotations and literary allusions... . A remarkable and brilliantly imagined novel, vital and inventive." ―Times Literary Supplement [London]

This information about The Wanting Seed (Norton Paperback Fiction) was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Click here and be the first to review this book!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) is the author of many works, including The Wanting Seed, Nothing Like the Sun, and Re Joyce. A Clockwork Orange is one of the "100 best novels" of both Time magazine and Modern Library and is on David Bowie's Book List.

More Author Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!
Win This Book
Win Theo of Golden

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…

Enter

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    Merry-Go-Round Broke Down
    by David Woo, Margalit Shinar
    Nine linked stories reveal how globalization sparks life-changing consequences across continents.
  • Book Jacket
    Days of Sun and Shadow
    by India Hayford
    A young woman’s coming-of-age story set in the early American frontier, shaped by tragedy, nature, and resilience.
  • Book Jacket
    Chelsea Girls
    by Catherine Lloyd
    A glamorous biographical novel on Mary Quant, whose daring design of the miniskirt revolutionized fashion.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket
    An Infinite Love Story
    by Chanel Cleeton
    “A tender, romantic drama that soars as high as it’s astronauts.” —Kate Quinn
  • Book Jacket
    Summer of Love
    by Kerri Maher
    Three women reshape their family's Napa Valley winery after the 1967 Summer of Love.
Book
Trivia
  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

The C is A R

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.