'Abba Abba' is about two poets who may or may not have met in Rome in 1820 - 1821. One was John Keats, who was dying in a house on the Spanish Steps. The other was Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli a great poet, little known outside Rome, since he wrote in the rough, dirty, blasphemous dialect of the Roman streets. The first part of the book is about Keats and Belli. The second part presents Belli himself as poet, translated by Mr Burgess. If Belli knew Keats, did Keats influence him? If Keats knew Belli, would Keats, if he had lived, have become a sort of English Belli? Hard and unanswerable questions. Anthony Burgess means this book merely to be enjoyable and perhaps touching.
