The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy (The Norton Library)

The novel's title refers, presumably, to the waning of British colonialism, as played out in Malaya in the 1950's. But for me, the dominant theme is that reflected in the quote I have appropriated for the title of this review. Malays, Chinese, Tamils, Indians, Sikhs, et alia, as well as British. It is a rich and exotic mulligan stew.THE LONG DAY WANES actually is a trilogy of three separate novels - "Time for a Tiger" (originally published in 1956), "The Enemy in the Blanket" (1958), and "Beds in the East" (1959). What unites them, in addition to their setting in Malaya in the couple years leading up to independence, is Victor Crabbe. Crabbe is a thirtyish Brit with a relatively liberal political orientation who has fled England plagued by guilt over the drowning of his first wife in a car accident, dragging with him his second wife Fenella. Crabbe is a teacher, and in each of the novels he has a different posting in the outgoing British colonial administration. Crabbe's life in Malaya is one of frustration and vexation: the heat, the rain, scorpions and C.T.'s (Communist Terrorists), the endless friction and misunderstandings among the different ethnic groups in Malaya and between each of them and the British, and the reactionary mindsets of many of his countrymen. And pervading everything and infecting virtually everyone is a tropical miasma of sexual desire.Storyline and plot take a back seat to a marvelous depiction of time and place and, more generally, a Zeus-like view from high on Mount Olympus of the human comedy. Burgess is amused by the human species in all its multifarious aspects. The tone is always light, never profound. The novel is comedic, not tragic. Indeed -- only a minor criticism, this -- too often the comedy becomes farcical. The pace is brisk; the writing fresh and occasionally brilliant; and trenchant quips abound.No people, religion, or political philosophy is spared from Burgess's barbs, but Islam, at least as practiced in Malaya, probably is the most frequent target: "When they talked about Malay self-determination, they really meant that Islam should frighten the Chinese with visions of hell; but perhaps they did not even mean that. They themselves were too fond of the bottle to be good Moslems; they even kissed women and ate doubtful meat." "Islam is mainly custom, mainly observance. There is very little real doctrine in it, only this belief in one God, which they think so original." "I have been reading an English translation of the Koran. I wonder how, with such a repetitive farrago of platitudes, expressing so self-evident a theology and an ethic so puerile, Islam can have spread as it has."Throughout, I yo-yoed between four and five Amazon stars. But near the end of the trilogy, Victor Crabbe meets a previously unknown rival for his dead first wife's affections via a preposterously implausible coincidence (deus ex machina?), replete with embarrassingly stilted, melodramatic dialogue. Thankfully, the scene lasts only a couple pages, but it decided me on four stars.

Anthony Burgess was quite a character. Anyone familiar in the least with his life and work or who has read, say, the first volume of his Autobiography is aware of his splendid cussedness. He was also polymathic and erudite in the extreme. He's one of the few writers who read and reread and had (as well as any human being is capable) a grasp of Finnegans Wake - As his alter ego, Crabbe, muses to himself here, "Everything in Finnegans Wake made sense eventually, if one waited for it."---He was also, of course, a gifted composer and many other things.The motive for my mentioning this personal information is that this "Malayan Trilogy" is highly autobiographical, and it adds verisimilitude (ach, what a dashed clunky but apt word) and zest to the reading of it to know a bit about its author. But, of course, one really need not know a thing about Burgess to enjoy his work.In it, Burgess, in the form of Crabbe and other characters, doesn't fail to put his interests in language and musical composition etc. on display. But what really makes this book more than a pale copy of a Somerset Maugham work - Crabbe reflects, at one point, that he is the epitome of a character out of a Maugham short story - is the cantankerous humour and brio which enliven the book. It's not MERELY the gin-sodden Brit expats being swallowed into the jungle to which they came, ostensibly, to bring the "rule of law", but also a glowingly absurd and tragic account of the interactions between people and peoples, between husbands and wives, between rulers and ruled, all written in a way that, well, only Burgess could write.Yes, I agree with the other reviewers, the Amaricanisation of what is now called Malaysia is a sad thing. - No more eccentrics in their linen flannels quaffing gin on their verandahs before noontide. - But, truly, the saddest thing is that there aren't any writers of Burgess's stripe around now to chronicle such things so richly.

What can one say about a work of literature that is both funny and haunting in it's portrayal of the final days of colonialism? This great work by Anthony Burgess, perhaps not as well known as his others, is still the best for anyone looking to experience the eve of the British Empire's collapse. The book is separated into a trilogy, each garnering a different part of life in Malay, as the protagonist mingles with the natives, and his own dark past. Victor Crabbe, our protagonist, is perhaps the incarnation of the white man in foreign lands. The expatriate who seeks to help and "civilize", only to find himself to be the one who is changed and "civilized" by his surroundings. Crabbe's journey is one of great humor, but also one of great emotional bearing. We watch as his marriage falls apart, the countless times he is made into a hero and a villain by those around him. We also see that this is a man haunted by the life he once had, and in the end a man who sees that his view of the past and present is strongly shielded by his own psychology. Filled with humor and irony, this book portrays the final days of the British Empire, from various points of view, from that of the white schoolmaster to the various ethnicities that populate the Malay Peninsula. All and all a great read for anyone and everyone, a book that is as intricate as it is educational.

This novel is rich in detail and humor. Antohny Burgess can pack more into one paragraph that most writers do in 200 pages! He's one of the greatest writers writing in English. There is nobody like him! His prose is intensely alive!

Anthony Burgess is my new best writer. I'm just about finished with the last book, and they're all really enjoyable. He gets people perfectly and puts them on paper perfectly. And the people are interesting, different, amusing (not on purpose), and real. There's no particular plot, just life, but interesting and occasionally amusing. The book reminds me a little of Under the Volcano, but it's better. He must have been brilliant to write this trilogy.

Through reading these three stories that superficially deal with the life of a rather frustrated English schoolteacher in not yet independent Malaya, the reader might gain a quite interesting insight into what was British colonialism.

A fine book that covers Malaysia's colonial past and people. Anthony Burgess had lived in 'Malaya' only a few years when he wrote the book but has very precise observations of the people.