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The ultraviolent, dystopian future envisioned by Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange, first published 50 years ago next month, didn’t truly come to pass, although recent moments of outlandish gore and nonsensical gang violence bring that into question.

Its debatable prescience, however, has done nothing to mute growing praise for a book seen as being among the best of the 20th century.

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And as the world’s literary community rose to salute the landmark anniversary of a landmark work by the British writer, made into an iconic film by American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, an unexpected pilgrimage to the basement of a Canadian library became necessary.

In the bowels of Hamilton’s McMaster University research archives sits the original manuscript of the novel, typed by Mr. Burgess and featuring his hand-written corrections, notations and illustrations.

It is from these 157 pages, part of a collection of Burgessian ephemera, that the book’s 50th anniversary edition, released last month, is drawn. And it is where nagging questions about the book are answered and new ones emerge.