Any Old Iron

by Anthony Burgess

Book Overview

This novel touches on the most crucial events of the period from the Russian Revolution to the emergence of Israel, as it follows the fortunes of two families, one Welsh and one Jewish, caught up in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0091738423
• ISBN13: 9780091738426
• Release Date: May 1989
• Publisher: Random House (UK)
• Length: 339 Pages
• Weight: 1.61 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Gladius In Extremis

This book is about Welsh (excuse me, Cymric) nationalism, and King Arthur's legendary sword Excalibur, sort of, well, maybe, superficially that is, since, as explained in the first chapter, steel corrodes too fast for the sword to have remained in existence all these centuries if it ever did, exist that is, though the theoretical possibility of its wooden scabbard still existing, if it ever did, and was, in fact, wooden, and could thus be carbon-dated, should not be dismissed out of hand. Ahem, perhaps this makes plain why I would not recommend this book to readers first exposing themselves to the work of Anthony Burgess. Readers familiar with Burgess will find all the familiar themes: Joycean word play (run rather amok here), ribald allusions, digressions on musicology (drolly focusing on the percussive here) and scads of witty badinage, against the backdrop of the absurdities of war and love and life and sex and other generalities that don't immediately come to mind. The general purport of which is summed up by "Reg", who gets all the best lines, thusly: "We can't be blamed for dreaming what we dream. It's another self that does the dreaming. We have too many selves. No wonder we're scared of sleep sometimes. Another self taking over. History is all about the other selves. Not the selves that eat and make love and play music. O God, kindly deliver us from our other selves." Not that the book, narrated by a self-confessed terrorist, gives the faintest impression, that God, if and in whatever form he may or may not exist, is about to do this any time in the near future. Summing up, a very fun read indeed - but probably not for Burgessian non-initiates - written by a mad Englishman, narrated by a Zionist terrorist with an MA in Philosophy, and chock full of weird etymologies and such related to Arthurian legend and the aforesaid Cymric Nationalist revolutionary or devolutionary movement. Only word-drunk readers with dirty minds need apply.

Burgess does what he does best - sly legends in prose!

In "Any Old Iron" Burgess gives us an entertaining tale of a Russo-Welsh family across the decades since the late 1800s. The story is ostensibly about families, war, love, birth and death - the usual fare, in other words. He also, being Burgess, gives us a liberal dose of foreign language, word play and (as a subtext that had me re-reading this book a number of times) a carefully camouflaged and delightfully off-kilter retelling of the Arthurian legend. This book is worth reading if only to see if you can tell which character was the "Fisher King" and which others correspond to legend - a marvellous romp through the legendary and the prosaic. Add in Burgess' sly wit and taste for word play and you have a story to settle down with for any number of evenings. I'm sorry Burgess is gone - we shan't see his like again for a long, long time!