The Malayan Trilogy

Description

Satiric trilogy about the last days of English Colonialism in Malaya in 1950s. 'Like all good comic writers Mr Burgess lives his creations as much as he writes them. First class'ObserverAnthony Burgess was an officer in the Colonial Service.In The Malayan Trilogy - Time for a Tiger, The Enemy in the Blanket and Beds in the East - he satirises the dog days of colonialism. Victor Crabbe is a well meaning, ineffectual English man in the tropics, keen to teach the Malays what the West can do for them. Through Crabbe's rise and fall and a series of wonderfully colourful characters, Burgess lays bare racial and social prejudices of post-war Malaya during the upheaval of Independence.

Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917. He served in the army from 1940 to 1954 before becoming a colonial education officer. It was while he held this post that doctors told him he would die, and he decided to try to live by writing. A prolific and respected author, Burgess died in 1993.

A sad, hilarious book about the underlife of the expatriate East * Independent on Sunday * Essentially and splendidly comic * The Scotsman * Magnificent black comedies about human nature: about vainglory, obliviousness, delusion, and the undertow of despair * The Boston Globe *