A previously unseen manuscript for a follow-up to writer Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange has been unearthed in his archive, The Guardian reported.

It was noted that the manuscript has been found among papers he abandoned in his home near Rome in the 1970s.

The unfinished manuscript was written in 1972 and 1973, after Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of A Clockwork Orange was accused of inspiring copycat crimes, prompting the director to withdraw it from circulation.  When Burgess died in 1993, the house was sold, and the archive eventually moved to the Burgess Foundation in Manchester.

Andrew Biswell, director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, called the sequel remarkable, and said it would shed “new light on Burgess, Kubrick and the controversy surrounding the notorious novel”.

“This is a very exciting discovery,” said Biswell. “Part philosophical reflection and part autobiography, The Clockwork Condition provides a context for Burgess’s most famous work, and amplifies his views on crime, punishment and the possible corrupting effects of visual culture. It also casts fresh light on Burgess’s complicated relationship with his own Clockwork Orange novel, a work that he went on revisiting until the end of his life.”