Abba Abba

Publisher: ABBA ABBA delves into a literary mystery with all of the originality, imagination, and relish that readers have prized in the author of A Clockwork Orange, 1985, and Nothing Like the Sun. In this novel, Anthony Burgess conjectures the possible meeting in Rome in 1820 or 1821 of two supreme masters of the sonnet form. One is John Keats, who is dying in a house on the Spanish Steps. The other is Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli-an extremely gifted poet little known outside Rome, because he writes unsentimental, often blasphemous poems in the rough dialect of the city streets. In the first part of the book, Burgess sets out a sensational literary speculation: If Belli had known Keats, would the latter have influenced him? If Keats had known Belli, might Keats have adopted something of the Italian's earthy style into his own verse? The second part offers a canny selection of Belli's sometimes shocking poetry, translated into English with all of the bite and verbal flair of the originals by one "J. J. Wilson"-who, by a stroke of good fortune, appears to have the singular gifts of the novel's author himself.