Wow, what a book. This man could write. I loved his turns of phrase:
When they woke up next noon, warm in twelve blankets each but with wooden mouths and coffin-makers hammering away in their skulls (201)
...some bearded bastard in the Kremlin heard the voice of God (167)
...and started to Koranize... (38)
...the young private must share of some transgression of the latter's which had been duly and Non-Commissionedly punished. (334)
His vocabulary was quite advanced: simony, sarabanded, micturition, brume, swive, exogamia, pantisocracy, longitudo clitoralis, pellucid, cerement, marc, galligaskins, tisane, quiddity... Almost all of these words are currently underscored in red wavy lines.
Can't really spoil this book. If you don't know already, Napoleon is dead. Burgess manages to make his history interesting. Great playing with time, like when the young Betsy went to get him a fancy snuff box but returned to two years earlier when she'd offered him a toy version of himself as a monkey.
He also broke the fourth wall once in a delightful way:
Those of our readers who are prepared to seek occasional diversion in what may, for want of a more learned term, be described as literal magic, will perhaps be encouraged to ponder on the signification of the letter W in the truncated career of our incarcerated Corsican. (318)
The whole bit between the two (three?) doctors about Napoleon's lactose intolerance was hilarious; I could see it being done by the geniuses behind 'Allo, 'Allo. I practically LOL'd.
