Date Published:

5 Jan, 2026

Abstract:

This essay analyzes Anthony Burgess’s “answer to Orwell” in his 1962 dystopia The Wanting Seed. It claims that the cyclical dynamic of liberal, oppressive, and conservative phases that critics have traditionally taken to be Burgess’s anti-Orwellian philosophy of history is balanced in the novel by an alternative picture of perpetual war, which may even be seen as the beginning of the Orwellian end of history. The text overlays these two interpretations, and it is not possible decisively to favor one over the other. The protagonist’s final existentialist insight is that we must “try to live” whatever world and history it is we live in.

 

October 2025: Jan-Boje Frauen is an associate professor at Zhejiang International Studies University (ZISU), Hangzhou, PR China. Jan’s academic background is in English, American and German Studies and philosophy (Göttingen University & University of California Santa Cruz). His Ph.D. is in International Relations and he has successfully completed a postdoc in science philosophy (Xiamen University). Jan’s interests span a wide array of fields in his academic publications, ranging from abstract philosophical considerations about the nature and future of subjectivity in the physical world to practical politics and recent history. However, 20th-century dystopian fiction and the work of Anthony Burgess have been with him ever since he wrote his M.A. thesis on Burgess many years ago. He has published numerous articles on Orwell’s 1984.