Illustrator Edward Pagram Originally published 1965 Page count 265 OCLC 559438259 | Pages 265 Genre Speculative fiction | |
Similar Anthony Burgess books, Speculative fiction books | ||
A Vision of Battlements is a 1965 novel by Anthony Burgess based on his experiences during World War II in Gibraltar, where he was serving with the British army. It is Burgess's first novel. While not published until 1965, Burgess wrote it in 1949. As he explains, "I was empty of music but itching to create. So I wrote this novel...to see if I could clear my head of the dead weight of Gibraltar."
Plot
The story draws from Burgess's experience of being stationed in Gibraltar during World War II and satirizes traditional notions of battle heroism by parodying the Aeneid with antihero Richard Ennis taking the place of Aeneas.
The title, in addition to its Gibraltarian associations, contains a reference to the appearance of certain objects in the eye of one who suffers from astigmatism.