Somewhat surreal, brutally comical, a fascinating insight into pre-independence Malaysia. The third book in the trilogy falls somewhat flat, but still worth a read.

Really enjoy the sophisticated written word here. Burgess is a magician in descriptive narrative. The storyline takes place against the backdrop of a changing Malaya - it is post war and the country is moving towards independence and seeking the emigration of the ruling western colonists. Victor Crabbe is the central character and represents the left wing educated idealist whose history of communist sympathy from his student days seems to follow him from the UK but we know little of the character who is mourning the death of his first wife whilst being married to a long-suffering second wife. The storyline probably represents the mourning of the past and the unwelcome changes of the future.

Furthermore, the plot seems to be going at a tangent at times after we lose Victor Crabbe's wife but I presume that's because we are dipping in and out of the lives of other supporting characters who are trying to make their way in what will be a new country.

Anthony Burgess is the classic postmodern writer because, well, he wrote in postmodern times. A Clockwork Orange is probably his best known work, and, really, I’ll bet you are hard pressed to name any others. Maybe the Enderby series, The Complete Enderby : Inside Mr. Enderby, Enderby Outside, the Clockwork Testament, Enderby's Dark Lady, which I have not read. Indeed, I cannot remember reading any other Burgess novels but, when I saw this trilogy, snapped it up mainly because of his literary reputation. Gotta say, this is pretty good.

The Malayan trilogy consists of three novels: Time for a Tiger, The Enemy in the Blanket, Beds in the East. They all have a continuing character, the rather befuddled Victor Crabbe, a history teacher in the British Service posted to Malaysia. Crabbe is a bit of a tragic figure. He had an accident in which his beloved first wife drowned and, ever since, he cannot drive nor can he swim. The sainted passed wife is his one true love; definitely not his second wife, Fenella, who Crabbe married “to quieten my nerves,” which I suppose is as good a reason as any. Except Crabbe is not invested in this marriage. Not at all and has affairs across the peninsula. Fenella was not thrilled with the Malaysian posting but went along because she is the dutiful British overseas wife. Until she’s not.

Each novel has another character as the central one, with Crabbe somehow appearing and taking over the story. The first novel opens with the rather delightful British police lieutenant Nabby Adams, who will do anything for a drink. And I mean anything. He is so profoundly an alcoholic that he cannot sit up from bed without a beer or something else to get him started, not to mention how much alcohol he needs to function throughout the day. Adams owes hundred, if not thousands, of dollars to the several Chinese, Tamil, and Malaysian shops where he runs tabs, and is on the verge of getting cut off from his various Elixirs of Life when he comes up with a scheme involving a dubious car purchase in which he and Crabbe split the proceeds, thereby reducing one of Adams' bills and allowing him to continue drinking. But Crabbe doesn’t drive, so what are we to do?

Enter Alladad Khan, Nabby’s sidekick, who has a crush on Fenella and is more than willing to serve as the Crabbe’s driver when not on police duty so he can be closer to Fenella. What ensues is a Keystone Cops series of adventures, not all of them comic, culminating in a Communist ambush of the car. And Adams’ fortuitous salvation.

In the second novel, The Enemy in the Bed, Crabbe is now the headmaster of a school in another province and Fenella has traded up for a Malaysian prince while Crabbe is chasing Anne Talbot, the wife of a colleague. Or she’s pursuing him, you decide. Everyone involved is rather civilized about the whole thing. Rupert Hardman, an English lawyer who abandoned a very lucrative position in a Hong Kong office because of ethics issues … lawyer with ethics, better take a photo and post it alongside the Yeti sightings … is running out of money and hits on a scheme to marry the formidable Malay beauty, Normeh; she has previously experienced “… Communist bullets that had rendered her twice a widow..." and which "...had merely anticipated, in a single violent instant, what attrition would more subtly have achieved,” which is Burgess’ deadpan way of describing Normeh’s extreme behavior. Rumors had been flying that both husbands were about to go to Europe and forget Normeh because a Malay Muslim marriage wasn’t recognized there and, well, the Commies happened to show up.

Well.

Hardman is, unfortunately, thinking the same thing: that he can marry Normeh, obtain the funds he needs to finance the lifestyle he wants to be accustomed to, and then hie off to England and a de facto divorce. But he has no idea who he’s dealing with. No idea at all.

In Beds in the East, Crabbe is winding down his position as Chief Education Officer of the fictional Malay state where he resides as looming Malayan independence displaces him. Fenella has returned to England where she starts a rather celebrated poetic career, one of her poems implying that Crabbe had suppressed her budding talent, and now she is free, free! While upriver, Crabbe runs into an old school colleague who tells him things about his first wife that shatters the torch he’s been carrying. Then something happens to Crabbe. You can decide what.

There are two other characters in this one: Rosemary, the beautiful Tamil party girl who is desperate to marry an Englishman and live in London, and Robert Loo, a high-functioning autistic who can compose music to rival Beethoven. Rosemary’s plans go awry, as one would expect. Crabbe tries to help Loo but runs smack into the middle of the Americans who are taking over as the English leave, and who have other ideas about grand music.

Throughout all three novels are bucketloads of side characters who range from the hilarious to the terrifying, all of them Burgess' construction of the various ethnic groups trying to mesh as a nation. Is it stereotyped? You betcha, but the characters are well drawn and you can’t help liking most of them. My personal favorites are the two Malayan construction workers who have nothing good to say about any of the other races and who daily plot murder. They pop up in the most unusual places, providing color commentary and never quite fulfilling their intents. There’s also an air of white-man’s-burden throughout the trilogy, some of it intentional as Burgess attempts to show how silly it is, but, sometimes, he falls right into it.

It’s a good trilogy for those of you who are interested in the time period and the events, as described by someone who was there. It’s fairly funny, too, so there’s that aspect. But it does feel rather dated.

tida' apa
(from the glossary: Malayan "it doesn't matter")

The story starts slow and lags towards the end but has enough going on throughout.
Absolutely skewering depiction of the "good liberal," our philandering and cuckolded protagonist Victor Crabbe, who wants to empty himself for the benefit of a people who resent him.
Often times the antics of the characters are simply too absurd, whether English, Malay, Tamil, Chinese, or Eurasian but otherwise this is a believable portrait of the last days of an imperial outpost.

This is the UK paperback edition of Anthony Burgess's first three novels, a trilogy of short comic novels set in Malay at the time it was assuming independence and setting to the difficult project of self-determination. The trilogy later came to be titled The Long Day Wanes, in reference to the waning suzerainty of the British empire.

This edition is notable for its typographical errors, mostly instances of misplaced quotation marks.

The central character of the three novels is Victor Crabbe, a schoolmaster assigned to the British service there. (As was Burgess.) The first two, Time For A Tiger and The Enemy In The Blanket are full of lively, humorous characters, many of them composites or loosely based on actual personalities of both east and west encountered by the author. Indeed, the latter inspired a libel suit against Burgess.

Beds In The East, the third book, suffers from less inspired characterization and drama. This might be rather ironic since it is this book that takes place during the most volatile chapter of Malay's nascent independence. As the long day wanes, so does reader interest.

As other people have pointed out, it reenacts the racism and stereotypes it purports to skewer. The #orientalistgaze is one hell of thing to break free from, though, so I give him stars for trying his damndest and for a vibrant, almost loving depiction of Malayan society at a specific point in history. #lovingorientalistgaze

the definitive colonial novel(s). Burgess has an emphatic understanding of the madhouse that is (was) British Malaya, and humorously employs the various tropes that highlight the absurdity of the colourful mosaic of the land of immigrants. brilliant.

Burgess captured the idiosyncrasies of what we may call an intensely fluid period just when Malaya was at the dawn of its independence. As a Malaysian who read his three stories in hindsight of 60 years, I couldn't help but to feel a melancholic disappointment that some of the stereotypes and foolishness depicted still remain to be preserved, like in a hermetically sealed bell jar. You can still see a Syed Omar, Rosemary, or even a Robert Loo today. As I read the last chapter of the third story, on how it is just regrettable that nothing seem to have changed after Crabbe's passing, it somehow brought to me a sense of Camusian absurdity. Shining that in a Malaysian context just brings the pang closer to home. The tone this trilogy ended with and the uniquely rich setting of a seemingly otherworldly dimension of the East that Burgess worked on from his experience as an Education Officer in the Malay town of Kuala Kangsar are what merits its stars.

But as a story, it suffers from its own resistance to move. Oftentimes, some phrases would appear out of context bringing to fore an impression that it is yet a refined work. Probably this is because these stories were the very first ones that started his livelihood in writing. You can see that rawness being polished time after time from how his character development became more complex from his first in Time for a Tiger to Enemy in a Blanket and ultimately the microcosm of Malaya he created in Beds in The East. So in that respect, do note that at that stage of writing, he was still experimenting.

Regardless, for Malaysians, it is worth a read, just for the sake of looking back at our ancestors in a frozen time glass.

Malaysia og Singapore

Left me with a profound thirst for Burgess's middle period (and a warmish bottle of Tiger beer. Or Anchor. Or Carlsberg).

This book merits five stars for its historical content but its sins against literature are great. I giving it four stars.
Anthony Burgess worked as a teacher on for the British Colonial Service in the Malayan Peninsula and in the Malayan archipelago from 1954 to 1959. In this role he witnessed the end of British rule which came in 1957 and the first two years of an independent Malaya (currently known as Malaysia.) His trilogy is highly regarded by English historians specializing in the region. I have seen it most recently praised in "Forgotten Wars" written by Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper of Cambridge and which describes the armed struggle against the Malayan communists conducted by the British during the time period that Burgess taught in the region. Burgess' novels brilliantly satirizes the members of the all the ethnic of all the various groups present: i.e. ethnic Malays, the Chinese, the Tamils, the Sikhs and of course the British colonials.
Burgess' main theory is that British Malaya was an unnatural amalgamation of dissimilar states created by the British for the purpose of guarding the south-eastern flank of India. Once formed, Britain did nothing to foster a feeling of community among the various ethnic groups. Britain's policies and actions served instead to enflame animosity among them. At the end of the British regime, the Tamils and Sikhs were hoping that the British would stay; the Chinese had thrown their lot in with the communist insurgents and the Malays were simply impatient to seize power so that they would gain control of the country's institutions.
The high regard of professional historians for the Trilogy has not translated into success with the general reading public. At the time of my writing this review there were 670,706 recorded ratings of "Clockwork Orange" of the GR Web site compared to 1,405 for the "Malayan Trilogy." The problem is that as literature the work is seriously flawed.
The first problem is that the tone is racist. Burgess does everything short of calling them Wogs to denigrate the people of Malaya. They want to learn the English language but they have no interest in the culture, civic virtues, or democratic institutions of the English people. They are self-serving flatters and backstabbers. They are alcoholics and sexually debauched. They think superficially unable to appreciate either the logic of western philosophy or the sublime spiritually of Christianity. They want to obtain television transmitters but have no interest in becoming civilized Englishmen. There is a basis of truth in what Burgess says but ultimately his Asian characters deteriorate into grotesque caricatures.
The English characters possess many of the same faults as the Asians but never become totally ludicrous Notably they drink heavily and are highly promiscuous. However, while the Asians are presented as being inherently bad, the Englishmen are portrayed as having been corrupted by the environment. Their greatest fear of the English is that they will sink so deeply into the Malayan morass that they never be able to return home.
The sad thing is that with his tasteless satire, Burgess is in fact trying to combat racism. He sees two separate evils. First Burgess believes that the dislike that the various races have for each other will seriously undermine any effort to build a common sense of belonging to the new nation. Second, he perceives that the racism of his characters in fact is a manifestation of self-loathing. In other words, the Malays must cease being racist in order to be have proper self-respect. Burgess' intentions are good but he fails in many places to stay within the bounds of good taste as he satirizes what he feels to be an unhealthy culture.
All three novels have a focus on the protagonist, Victor Crabbe, who appears to be modeled on Anthony Burgess. Crabbe teaches at British Government school, smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish. He neglects and cheats on his second wife while mourning his much loved first wife who died in an automobile accident. Crabbe's is haunted by a prediction of one of his Malayan enemies that he will die in Malaya.
The first novel, "Time for a Tiger" devotes a great deal of attention to Nabby Adams an alcoholic police lieutenant of mixed Indian and English race. Nabby Adams is one of the few truly likable characters in the trilogy. At the end of "Time for a Tiger" he wins a lottery which allows him to return home to India.
The second novel, "The Enemy in a Blanket" focuses on Rupert Hardman an impoverished lawyer who marries a rich Muslim widow. This proves to be a mistake that traps Hardman in Malaya. At the end of "The Enemy in a Blanket", Hardman is in Mecca on a Haj realizing he will never make it home to England. Crabbe's second wife fares much better. Having had enough of Crabbe's infidelities she leaves him and goes home to England.
In the third novel, "Beds in the East" the mood changes. Burgess no longer simpler satirizes his miserable characters. He begins to mourn the squandered opportunity to make something great of the Malaya. He encourages Robert Loo one of his students who is a talented composer of classical music that combines elements of Bartok, Kodaly and Poulenc with local folk tunes. Loo has in other words managed to combine the high art of the West with indigenous Malayan culture. Unfortunately, Crabbe's term in Malaya has run out. He hands over his responsibilities to his Malayan replacement and then dies accidentally before his able to leave the new country. The Americans who replace the British as the prime Western influencers in Malaya have no interest in the music of Crabbe's protégé which in their opinion is too European and lacking the folk elements of Malayan music.
While the first two novels each have a dominant subplot, the third novel "Beds in the East" has two. The first involves Robert Loo one of Crabbe's students who happens to be a talented composer of classical music that combines elements of Bartok, Kodaly and Poulenc with local folk tunes. In the evyes of Crabbe, the great value of Loo's compositions is that they combine the high art of the West with indigenous Malayan culture. Unfortunately, Crabbe's term in Malaya has run out. He hands over his responsibilities to his Malayan replacement and then dies accidentally before his able to leave the new country. The Americans who replace the British as the prime Western influencers in Malaya have no interest in the music of Crabbe's protégé which in their opinion is too European and lacking the folk elements of Malayan music.
The second subplot of "Beds in the East" concerns Rosemary Michael a Christian Tamil who has a sever problem of self-loathing. She will not accept the idea that she is not of the white race. She eds a series of white men hoping that one of them will marry her and take her to England.
The third novel also resolves Crabbe's story. The reader learns that, free presence, his second wife becomes a highly successful poet in England. To make Crabbe's humiliation even worse, he learns that his first wife had also become fed up with him and had been planning to leave him at the time of her fatal automobile accident. Our protagonist has thus died in a remote South-Eastern jungle having accomplished nothing in life and missed by no one. It is a clever resolution to the tale of a hero that unfortunately never really engages the sympathy of the reader.
Despite its many flaws, "The Malayan Trilogy" is must reading for anyone interested in the history of South-East Asia in the 20th century.

The trilogy contains the first published works of Anthony Burgess; "Time for a Tiger", "The Enemy in the Blanket" and "Beds in the East".
Inspired by his service as an education officer at Kuala Kangsar and Kota Bharu in the 1950's, the books are set in Malaya at the time of the Communist insurgency and the run up to Independence.
In a comical, politically incorrect manner, he pokes equal fun at the, soon to be gone, Colonialists, the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians.
Burgess also displays a prophetic understanding of a post independence Malayasia.
Highly recommended.