A Dead Man in Deptford

In his final novel, Burgess gives us the imagined life of on Christopher Marlowe - the homosexual playwright, poet and reluctant spy. The book is a little difficult to get into as Burgess has adopted a kind of “Elizabethan-speak”, so there's lots of thous and thees, but once you go with it, the prose does become easier to read.

Told as if by a stage-actor contemporary of Marlowe (unnamed), we follow young Kit from his student days where he is recruited by Walsingham for a mission as a spy to France, through his success with the plays Tamburlaine and Faust, to his eventual fate in Deptford.

It's really a philosophical discussion between the various characters about religion, atheism, love, sex and the nature of God, wrapped up in an Elizabethan espionage thriller. Quite the feat of words.

Not my favourite Burgess, of those I've read, but well worth your time.