Penguin Essentials "What we were after was lashings of ultraviolence". In this nightmare vision of youth in revolt, fifteen-year-old Alex and his friends set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture and murder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the State tries to reform him - but at what cost? Social prophecy? Black comedy? Study of freewill? "A Clockwork Orange" is all of these. It is also a dazzling experiment in language, as Burgess creates a new language - "nadsat", the teenage slang of a not-too-distant future.