A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

AZ: "In this nightmare vision of a not-too-distant future, fifteen-year-old Alex and his three friends rob, rape, torture and murder - for fun. Alex is jailed for his vicious crimes and the State undertakes to reform him - but how and at what cost?"

In terms of plot ACO is quite thin, the lead character is a sociopath who gets his kicks from violence, goes to prison, is put into a rebab programme which makes him feel sick at the thought of violence. This programme includes music, he tries to commit suicide and ends up cured from his programming, but at the end of the book grows up and out of his taste for violence. The interest is in the language, largely in the nadsat which young people speak which is never explained and gives the text a vivacity It was touching but I believe Burgess when he says it's not his best work.