• Close-up of a historical handwritten manuscript page in cursive ink, showing dense text on aged paper, held open by a person’s hand at the bottom edge.
Anthony Burgess in 1989 pictured by Helmut Newton

Anthony Burgess, Translation and Literary Forgery

By Martin Kratz In 1978, Anthony Burgess published several translations of work by the nineteenth-century Roman poet G.G. Belli. Burgess’s longstanding engagement with Belli had culminated the previous year in the publication of ABBA ABBA (1977), a hybrid novel/literary translation.…