The Malayan Trilogy

Like all good comic writers Mr Burgess lives his creations as much as he writes them. First class' Observer Anthony 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.