The Angry Brigade

by Alan Burns

Book by Burns, Sir Alan

Genres: Novels, Fiction

185 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Alan Burns published eight novels, two essay collections, a play, and a short story collection. Major works include Europe After the Rain, Celebrations, Babel, and Dreamerika! A Surrealist Fantasy. From the 1960s on, he was associated with the loosely-constituted circle of experimental British writers influenced by Rayner Heppenstall that included Stefan Themerson, Eva Figes, Ann Quin and its informal leader, B. S. Johnson.

In 1982 he co-edited (with Charles Sugnet) The Imagination on Trial: British and American Writers Discuss Their Working Methods, which the Washington Post "Book World" called "diverting, iconoclastic, and compulsively readable". The book included interviews with 11 authors (as well as Burns himself): J. G. Ballard, Eva Figes, John Gardner, Wilson Harris, John Hawkes, B. S. Johnson, Tom Mallin, Michael Moorcock, Grace Paley, Ishmael Reed, and Alan Sillitoe.

Angus Wilson called Burns "one of the two or three most interesting new novelists working in England."

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Following the collage masterpiece Dreamerika!: A Surrealist Fantasy, Burns tried to write a novel that had more mass appeal to provide shoes for his children. Parting from his mentor and regular publisher Calder, Burns released this novel that uses straightforward “spoken” accounts to recreate a fictitious protest faction that balloons into violence and murder. An inventive look at the poison that can infect well-meaning causes and lead to the sort of fascist madness that makes our planet such a shameful waste of skin.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is subtitled 'a documentary novel', and it is based on a series of bombings that actually took place in the uk in the early 70s. but don't let that or the blurb fool you, this is almost entirely fictional and bares probably no resemblance to the actual events or persons behind those bombings. it is presented at the verbal accounts of six different people who are drawn into a radical leftist group and become progressively more radicalised and eventually carry out urban guerilla style attacks. the style is simple, almost the opposite of Babelwhich i read a while ago, and while it makes sense give the oral account conceit i actually found it a bit too straightforward and easy to read most of the time. time works at different speeds in this book - probably like half the book is spent showing the early stages of the movement and the slow shift from early activism to more committed and militant activities, but after this happens things start to jump around much more - all of a sudden bombings are being carried out and one character is sent to prison for multiple years. the book is almost finished at this point but we do see this character get out, and the book seems to have become much more overtly fictional - the time is no longer clear and the radicals seem to have transitioned into a fully armed militia roaming around a british police state, equipped with machine guns and blowing up houses with apparent impunity. it is tough to know what to make of this - the shift to pervasive violence is almost presented like a nightmare, or certainly less 'real' than the rest of the book. there's a sense that something has gone terribly wrong, especially as the character now in charge of the radicals was shown earlier to be in communication with a government agent of some kind. if it had been written later i'd say this was maybe a nod to operation gladio and some of the false flag attacks carried out a result of that but i don't think burns would have been aware of that in the early 70s. so while i can't recommend this entirely for the writing style it's pretty cool if you're interested in radical movements and the early 70s political environment.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

a relatively quick and unsettling read. all of the violence and anarchy of fight club, but with the added horror that this stuff actually happened.