Obscenity & the Arts

Obscenity & the Arts is the first new work from Anthony Burgess in over twenty years. The story of his struggle with censorship, religious conservatism and a vengeful government on the island of Malta between 1968 & 1974 has never been told before.

Renowned authors Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch and The Whole Woman) and Andrew Biswell (The Real Life of Anthony Burgess) provide newly commissioned essays on the wider themes provoked by Burgess’s difficulties in Malta—which still resonate today: how to define and discern obscenity and pornography, and the recurring problem of state censorship. The fulcrum of the work is a full transcript of Burgess’s lecture at the University of Malta in 1970—previously printed as a short-run pamphlet from the Malta Library Association in 1973 but, made available here to an international readership for the first time. The book also incorporates previously unseen archive documentation and photography (including images taken by the author himself) which emphasise Burgess’s extraordinary term in Lija.

Obscenity & the Arts is a non-fiction compendium of primary source materials and learned explication. A pocket-size work of virtuosity and craft. As featured in: TLS, The Guardian, Il Giornale, Malta Independent on Sunday, Times of Malta and Review 31, and a course text at King's College London.