Little Wilson and Big God, volume I of Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess

John Burgess Wilson  – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...

's autobiography, was first published by Heinemann in 1986. It won the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography

J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography

The J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography is awarded annually by the English Centre for International PEN to given to a literary autobiography of excellence, written by an author of British nationality and published during the preceding year. The winner receives £1,000 and a silver pen. The winner...

.

The work describes a period of over 40 years from Burgess’s birth, in 1917, to 1959, when his time as teacher and education officer in Malaya

Federation of Malaya

The Federation of Malaya is the name given to a federation of 11 states that existed from 31 January 1948 until 16 September 1963. The Federation became independent on 31 August 1957...

 and Borneo

Borneo

Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....

 came to an end.

The writer’s education at Xaverian College

Xaverian College

Xaverian Roman Catholic Sixth form College is a College in the city of Manchester.-Admissions:It lies in the inner city suburb of Rusholme close to Wilmslow Road and Oxford Road...

 and at Manchester University

Victoria University of Manchester

The Victoria University of Manchester was a university in Manchester, England. On 1 October 2004 it merged with the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology to form a new entity, "The University of Manchester".-1851 - 1951:The University was founded in 1851 as Owens College,...

, his war service at an army garrison in Gibraltar

Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...

, and his service as a teacher at Banbury Grammar School

Banbury School

Banbury School is a mixed, multi-heritage, fully comprehensive school with 1,650 students situated on Ruskin Road, in the Easington ward of Banbury, Oxfordshire, England. The school is a specialist Humanities College....

 (which he describes as one of the happiest periods of his life) are all covered in detail.

One of the most significant literary autobiographies in English of the latter part of the 20th century, the book has been described as resembling a picaresque novel

Picaresque novel

The picaresque novel is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society...

 in the vividness of its descriptions and its readability.

Roger Lewis

Roger Lewis

Roger Lewis , a former Fellow of Wolfson College at Oxford University, is the biographer of Anthony Burgess. Lewis's book, Anthony Burgess: A Life, was published in 2002....

opined that "It is perhaps Burgess's memoirs...which constitute his best novels, his masterpieces."