The metaphor of the clockwork universe provides a useful touchstone for considering [some of Burgess's novels] …, and it is a motif extended and developed throughout his work; but Burgess has already beaten clock time as he has transcended national borders through fiction which constantly breaks beyond imposed and conventional thinking. (p. 3)

Burgess doesn't "think that the job of literature is to teach us how to behave," but he does "think it can make clearer the whole business of moral choice by showing what the nature of life's problems is." In other words, he must first define the clockwork enemy; once we see the situation clearly, then perhaps it can be controlled. For Burgess personally and artistically this definition begins with the global holocaust of World War II, which redefined racial, political, individual, spiritual, and temporal values for the modern world. (p. 4)

[A Vision of Battlements] not only examines...