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Title: The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy by Anthony Burgess ISBN: 0-393-30943-6 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 February, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Must Have for Ex-pats and Students of Asian Affairs
Comment: This ranks as one of the funniest books ever written, while being at the same time a social history of Malaysia, or Malaya as it was known under British Rule. The first book of the trilogy deals with the last days of British colonialism (hence the title "The Long Day Wanes") through the misadventures of a remittance man named Nabby Adams, a civil servant, his wife, household staff, and local government characters. The second novel follows the civil servant and his failing marriage through the guerilla years in the struggling nation, and the third is The Coming of the Americans. These three events have been a sort of template for late 20th century global affairs. It's a tight trilogy that reflects historical and social changes through its characters in the satirical literary slapstick characteristic of Burgess at his best. If you've never read Burgess, this is the place to start. It will bring you an appreciation of "where he's coming from," literally: it is based upon his experiences as a British Civil Servant in the waning days of the Empire (upon which the sun set 30 June 1997 with the cession of Hong Kong to Red China). This review was originally published in June 1997 and with some site changes, my name got lost and Amazon was unable to transfer the review with my name attached, so this is a reprint of that earlier one.
Rating: 5
Summary: Funny but true
Comment: One thing I have always admired about Anthony Burgess's novels is the compassion that he quietly conveys for his characters. They are all flawed: imperfect archetypes, reluctant saviours, apologetic swearers, gin mixed in with the orange crush. And we recognize ourselves in them all for this essential humanity, their endless struggle or acquiescence, for or against their unlikely fates. Burgess's humour is rueful and sharp: wistful disappointment and calm despair are the backdrop for his characters' heroic protests or desperate affairs.
He also writes with a playfulness and intelligence that shines through every page. Typically, his debt to Joyce and Shakespeare often wanders through his pages like a passing shade.
The Long Day Wanes shows much of Burgess at his best. Its setting in Malaya is a world apart: inner struggles against human desires, social forces against cultural divides. While writing of a world that fast disappears, he tells us a story old as the Malayan jungle.
Rating: 5
Summary: Fine Literary Satire About Ambiguous Future of Asia
Comment: I found this an absorbing, literary read, and like the other reviewers I first read this while living out East (in the 90s - Hong Kong & S'pore). I am amazed on re-reading it how many of the actions and attitudes of the characters - British, Malay, Indian, Chinese, American - along with so many of the secondary details, were still relevant and recognizable among Easterners and Western expats of today. The main story makes fine reading, too. In fine language, Anthony Burgess (who was a colonial civil servant in Malaya and spoke Malay) describes the last few years of British rule and the troubled handover to independance. There is a lot of enjoyable detail about life in the Malay peninsula at the time - many good scenes and vignettes, but what comes across clearly by the end is the uneasiness and ambiguity felt by Burgess about the future of independant Malaya and Singapore - he is worried about the hatred of the various ethnic communities for each other and the slim hold of British law, also the lack of interest among educated locals (besides the ones with marketable skills and talents who emigrated to new lives and identities in the First World) for anything other than technological development. Many of these concerns have sadly been born out - the split between Malaysia and Singapore, the second class status of the Malays in S'pore, of the Chinese in Malaysia, of the Indians in both places, the soulessness of the modern nightlife of KL and S'pore. Law in Malaysia is today a farce - witnewess the treatment of the politician Anwar, once Prime Minister Mahathir's 2nd-in-command, put in the dock seemingly forever for what was known in Singapore as "the endless buggery trial"; and Singapore under Harry Lee Kuan Yew has an even worse legal system (read Christopher Lingle's account, *Singapore's Authoritarin Capitalism*, or Francis Seow's, *A Dissident in Lee Kuan Yew's Prisons*). But this is a vivid, funny and moving novel above all - perhaps especially so if you have any connection with that part of the world, but of course it works brilliantly also if you're just looking for a good, cracking read. The thing I remember thinking after reading this was how sad it is that so many talented Malaysians and Singaporeans emigrate to other countries to get away from the sad realities at home. Burgess forsaw some of this, as well as much more. This is a classic about Malaya/Singapore the same way Paul Theroux's *Kowloon Tong* so accurately describes Hong Kong at the end (for which it was given the honor of being banned by China). Time for a Tiger!
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Title: Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima ISBN: 0679722416 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 April, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai ISBN: 0811204812 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation Pub. Date: 01 June, 1973 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Ways of Dying: A Novel by Zakes Mda ISBN: 0312420919 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul ISBN: 0679722025 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 March, 1989 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, Lewis Galantiere ISBN: 0151970874 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 15 October, 1992 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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