Malayan Trilogy [Import] [Paperback]

Anthony Burgess (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 591 pages
• Publisher: VINTAGE (RAND); New Ed edition (February 12, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0749395923
• ISBN-13: 978-0749395926
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 1.5 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,566,165 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anthony Burgess (25th February 1917-22nd November 1993) was one of the UK's leading academics and most respected literary figures. A prolific author, during his writing career Burgess found success as a novelist, critic, composer, playwright, screenwriter, travel writer, essayist, poet and librettist, as well as working as a translator, broadcaster, linguist and educationalist. His fiction also includes NOTHING LIKE THE SUN, a recreation of Shakespeare's love-life, but he is perhaps most famous for the complex and controversial novel A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, exploring the nature of evil. Born in Manchester, he spent time living in Southeast Asia, the USA and Mediterranean Europe as well as in England, until his death in 1993.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A funny book that requires a modicum of maturity, August 3, 2002

By 

"egon_superb" (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Malayan Trilogy (Paperback)

I started this book in my 20's. It did not do very much for me then. I liked the exotic location and indeed the characters who peopled it. I hasten to add that I had just finished the Enderby Trilogy and that is a hard act to follow, and I was expecting similar.

Some 20 years after, I have revisited the book. What you get are the sites, sounds, smells, ambience, attitude (loved the bit about the young Malaysians adopting 50's rock and roll attitude)and the entire human continent of Asia unfolding in one locality - sikhs, tamils, chinese, arabs, mestizos etc. You can feel the heat and humidity and anxiety.

This is book is cinema for the imagination. I just hope that the film rights have been sold to right people.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life in colonial Malaya, February 9, 2002

By 

F.J.RAVENEY (Robertsbridge, Sussex, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Malayan Trilogy (Paperback)

This trilogy is composed of books published over a 3 year period [1956-59], and are called Time for a Tiger, The Enemy in the Blanket and The Beds in the East. The Trilogy was re-issued later as The Long Day Wanes in 1981.

The central character is Victor Crabbe, an idealist liberal working first as a teacher, then as a headmaster, and finally in the Administration of the Education department in Malaya [now Malaysia]. Anthony Burgess (John Burgess Wilson) denied that Crabbe was based on himself, but there are some obvious similarities in the careers and in Burgess's own attitudes to his compatriots.

In the first book, Time for a Tiger, Crabbe has profound difficulties with his wife, Fenella, who like many expatriate wives in that time had a problem in coming to grips with life in a petty-minded and prejudiced environment. This is the last few years before Malaysia was granted independence, and so there is no more empire-building, only commercial exploitation. This theme is repeated throughout the 3 books. Crabbe has a permanent guilt about the death of his first wife in a car accident, for which he may or may not have been responsible, and this theme also recurs throughout the trilogy.

She leaves him at the end of "The Enemy in the Blanket" and so in the third book he is alone and struggling with internal politics in running his department - his overall concern is to do a good job and to leave the education department in good hands for the future, when the country attains its independence.

I think this book wil appeal more to people with a knowledge of life in colonial Malaysia. Crabbe has several irritating characteristics, and the references to music, and classical literature may irritate some readers unfamiliar with these subjects. Burgess was a frustrated composer, and this is evident in the writings of the Trilogy. Words in the major National languages, Malay, Tamil, and Cantonese are used quite freely throughout the text, and a glossary is provided; however the Malay is in the old spelling and not the modernised Bahasa Malaysia. Sometimes the plot and sub-plots seem weak and wander away from a logical conclusion. The theme of the book isof course somewhat dated, and the prose style does not have the charm and interest of say, Somerset Maugham, who was writing about a much earlier era in colonial history.

I like this book for personal reasons, I have travelled frequently and widely in Malaysia for over 30 years, and have family there. It is interesting to compare events from the time when the book was set, and now, and be thankful for the positive changes.

2.0 out of 5 stars Beware Introduction, September 23, 2009

By 

Softly, softly . . . (Champaign, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Malayan Trilogy (Paperback)

I've reviewed this trilogy elsewhere The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy (The Norton Library) so won't repeat that review here. But this edition has what I think is a tendentious and inaccurate introduction by Burgess that the publishers have apparently seen fit to reproduce from a 1972 edition without further comment.