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Title: The Malayan trilogy by Anthony Burgess ISBN: 0-14-003447-1 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 1972 Format: Unknown Binding

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Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: Review of The Malayan Trilogy
Comment: The Malayan Trilogy is about the lives of the Asians and colonists in Malaya. The three books centre on Victor Crabbe, an Education Officer who loves Malaya and seeks to improve the lives of the Malayan people. Malaya is a confused world with different racial groups living their everyday lives surrounded by Communist threat, jungles, mosquitoes, scorpions, grocery stores, coffee shops, drunkards and prostitutes. It is hot and humid; characters are perpetually drenched in sweat and beer. Life is difficult as the characters attempt to make sense of the turmoil. The trilogy ends in a poignant and realistic manner, after Victor Crabbe learns something he does not previously know about his first wife. There are many colourful characters in this trilogy. There is Nabby Adams the perpetual drunkard. There is Fenella Crabbe, Victor's second wife who can never get used to life in Malaya and eventually leaves Victor to become a successful writer. There is also the beautiful Rosemary and her European dream. The different locals are scattered through the three different books. There is Ibrahim who refused to marry. There is Rahimah, who is Victor's mistress. There is Robert Loo the music composer who is rejected by Rosemary. The Malayan Trilogy is a very rich and well written book. Burgess understood the languages, cultures and lifestyles of the people firsthand, perhaps much better than an Asian like myself. This book is strongly recommended for all readers who want to understand the socio-historical background of Malaya, as well as readers of historical fiction. However, readers who are familiar with Burgess's Clockwork Orange are forewarned that the pace in this book is much slower and it belongs to a different category of writing altogether, which demonstrates Burgess's versatility. All in all, I find it a very good book, but not recommended for readers who do not like slow-moving readings and not recommended for reading leisure. It is a serious book that is more than well researched. Burgess lived it to write it.

Rating: 4
Summary: A funny book that requires a modicum of maturity
Comment: 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.

Rating: 5
Summary: Life in colonial Malaya
Comment: 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.