Mozart and the Wolf Gang

"Anthony Burgess's tribute has an ironic component. He sets his scene mostly in heaven, from which Saddam Hussein's guns can be faintly heard. He splits himself up into several warring personages, initiates discussions which get nowhere except a region where understanding of the nature of music (not just Mozart's) may conceivably begin to dawn. Mozart brings solace to our tattered lives but he also brings bewilderment. This is, in fact, a kaleidoscope of a book, which goes beyond the bounds of even Anthony Burgess's fiction: in which an attempt to understand Mozart is made through celestial dialogue, a Stendhalian effort at turning Symphony No. 40 into fiction, an opera libretto, and fragments of a film script join with the author's own internal colloquies to answer the unanswerable. In effect, a gang of wolves is on the scent of the meaning of music. Mozart and the Wolf Gang is Anthony Burgess's bicentennial tribute to the genius of Mozart. This critical edition includes an introduction and substantial annotations by Alan Shockley, who brings his expertise as a composer and musicologist to the role of editor. The text of Burgess's novel has been freshly edited from manuscripts. The appendices provide contextualising essays on music by Burgess, along with a selection of reviews from the novel's first publication in 1991"--From back cover.