Time for a Tiger

The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy #1

by Robert F. Burgess

First book in Anthony Burgess' trilogy about postwar Malaya at the time when people and governments alike are bemused and dazzled by the turmoil of independence. Rich in hilarious comedy and razor-sharp in observation. The protagonist of the work is Victor Crabbe, a teacher in a multiracial school in a squalid village, who moves upward in position as he and his wife maintain a steady decadent progress backward.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Historical Fiction, Ebooks, Historical, Literature, Classics

189 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Robert F. Burgess grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and as a youth often trout-fished the same creeks and streams as Ernest Hemingway. At the end of World War II he served with the U. S. Army 88th Blue Devil Division Ski Troops in northern Italy. After the war he returned to Europe on the GI Bill to study foreign languages at universities in Italy and Switzerland; then completed his education in Journalism at Michigan State University. He became a Florida magazine writer/photographer specializing in sport fishing and scuba diving adventures. Later he returned to Europe with his wife to travel and write for various magazines there and abroad. The author lives in North Florida. Mr. Burgess has been called a Renaissance man because his books cover a wide spectrum of time and events. He writes real-life adventures about shipwrecks and sharks; treasure diving, cave diving; underwater archaeology, meeting Hemingway in Pamplona and short e-book stories about Marine snipers during the Vietnam War. His writing style puts the reader in whatever adventure he describes so that they themselves become part of that adventure.

Reviews

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nabby Adams drank his fill, feeling his stomach churn and bubble, feeling the real thirst thirstily return.

Not at all like any other Anthony Burgess novel that I've read (none of which were like any of the others, actually), this first novel is tautly written, closely observed, sensitive to the pathos of life as coloniser and colonised both, jam-packed with Malaysian terms (a glossary is provided) and also a lot of fun. It is, in fact, a journey from one beer to another (quite literally so), to boot—though this is no undergraduate debauch by any means.

Beer, beer, beer. For God’s sake, man, haven’t you another blessed thought in your head at all but beer?

This is the first novel of a 40-something man who had seen the world, and is suddenly and mistakenly told he is in possession of an inoperable brain tumour and has one year to live, and who sets out to provide his wife with some kind of income by writing thre novels during that year. Thankfully, he lived to write many, many more.

One of several principal characters and quite a character is Nabby Adams, That's soldier Nabby Adams, a sensitive, reckless but somewhat principled lout, annd untutored, but kind of brilliant alcoholic...

Toddy was cheap enough. The smell of decay was ghastly, but you could always hold your nose. The taste wasn’t so good either: burnt brown paper. Still, it was a drink. Good for you, too. If it wasn’t for the smell and the taste it would be a damn good drink.

...who is also brilliant, though never having any money whatsoever, at seeking alcohol out...

“Yes, yes,” gasped Nabby Adams, breathless after the first draught, his body hungering for the next. “Yes, Paddy.” He raised the bottle and drank life to the lees. Now he could afford to sit down, smoke a cigarette, drink the next bottle at leisure. But wait. What time was it? Four forty-five, said the alarm-clock. That meant he would have to go back to bed and sleep for a little. For if he didn’t what the hell was he going to do? Three bottles wouldn’t last him till it was time to go to the Transport Office. But in any case if he drank another bottle now that would mean only one bottle to wake up with. And no bottle for breakfast. He groaned to himself: there was no end to his troubles.

Nabby is more or less adopted by the luckless school teacher Crabbe and his unhappy wife—as is his underling and conscripted boy-Friday, the soon-besmitten Aladad Khan. Nabby somehow manages to enliven their lives merely by being his drunken, irresponsible self.

Crabbe is genial, almost fatherly with his Malay charges, who more or less get with the various exigencies of the English 'public' school system as their English counterparts

The class tasted the word ‘harsh’. It was the right word, the word they had been looking for. ‘Harsh’. Its sound was harsh; it was a harsh word., albeit with a few twists...

I won't spoil those, except to tell you that Nabby names his dog 'Cough' because it was the second syllable of the expletive that his previous owner, who later simply abandoned him, always hurled her way... I shall also get you to the penultimate beer, the titular Tiger (the ultimate, much more expensive Carlsberg, is saved for the end, for a reason I won't reveal here), amongst which quantities of brandy, gin, rice spirits, 'toddy', etc., are also much consumed in this first installment to the trilogy and a great read...

“Did you bring any beer back, Paddy?” asked Nabby Adams.

“Beer? Beer?” Flaherty screamed and danced. “I’ll take my dying bible that if it was the Day of Judgment itself and the dead coming out of their graves and we all of us lined up for the bloody sentence and He in His awe and majesty as of a flame of fire standing in the clouds of doomsday, all you’d be thinking about would be where you could get a bottle of blasted Tiger. There’ll be beer where you’re going to at the last,” promised Flaherty, dripping with prophetic sweat. “There’ll be cases and cases and barrels and barrels of it and it’ll all be tasting of the ashes of hell in your mouth, like lava and brimstone, scalding your guts and your stomach, so that you’ll be screaming for a drop of cold water from the hands of Lazarus himself, and he in Abraham’s bosom on the throne of the righteous.

This causes Nabby to ransack his neighbour's room, and finding only an assortment of those little airplane bottles, and, well, Nabby being Nabby, any port in a storm...

Nabby Adams ingested successively Cherry Brandy, Drambuie, Crème de Menthe, Cointreau, John Haig, Benedictine, Three Star, Sloe Gin, Kümmel, Kirsch. The terrible thirst abated somewhat, and Nabby Adams soon had leisure to feel shame

Not too much shame though. Time for a Tiger has been written with brio and wit by a budding literary lion with all the compassion of an apostate Lamb.

[Syahira · Rating 5 out of 5]

I genuinely think this book is brilliant and it genuinely made me laugh and I totally get why this book remained banned to this day. Not many realize how it was intentionally a cultural and political satire of pre-Merdeka days masquerading as literary fiction. There's no denying that Anthony Burgess understood Malaya and its people well in this book. His fluency and the ease of use in several different language told a lot about his skills as a linguist. Unlike "The Clockwork Orange", I didn't find myself having a problem reading through this book and the use of the local language and dialect was fluent and believable. There was mild Urdu in several part of the story which Burgess accompanied with subtle translations unlike some of the untranslated Malay in it. Malaya Malay is much different version than the current Malay that Malaysian use but the Malay is still understandable although outdated. But his occasional use of the Manglish and "-lah" in dialogues pretty much made everything legit.
The book uses stream of consciousness that work well as it was centered mostly on the characters of this book. The narration focus much the characters in this book : Victor Crabbe, Nabby Adams, Alladad Khan and several lesser narrators.I don't think Burgess think he was being subtle in this book. The name "Lanchap" was another word for masturbation . He called the town Kuala Kangsar as Kuala Hantu and I know it was Kuala Kangsar because its also a royal town (with his not so subtle mention of a certain Iblis along with some delicious gossips which are totally relatable to this day) and the unsubtle mention of infamous boy college.

As for the theme of alcoholism in this, it was titled "Time for a Tiger", (duh), even the author explained in in the beginning of the story about it being a brand of cheap beer. Alcohol still remain expensive and heavily taxed in Malaysia so Tiger beer still remain moderately expensive and it made sense how most of the characters in this book was bed-ridden with debt. That was why there's some several mentions of moonshines in this book. I'd suspected that Nabby Adams was another word for the malay usage of the stylistic "Anak Adam" which technically an anonymous name you give to a person if you're unsure of the name or if you don't know the name, which work well since he's a hedonistic Malay Muslim and in this country, you can easily get persecuted for selling a drink to a muslim. As much one would cry 'cliche', the problem is still real and apparent still persistent to this day despite strict laws and high alcoholic taxes. Apparently nothing much change since the 40s and 50s.

But narrating characters themselves was ever interesting. Since Burgess himself lived in those times, it was technically a historical novel although it was written in a contemporary style. Even Crabbe was a caricatured version of him and probably as well as the characters in this book. It was really a slice of history. How the people are alive and vibrant in those days where the British Empire dwindled. People who have their own problems and issues as we do today. The characters were ever vibrant even with multiple of flaws. They have ignorance, they have lust, they feel too strongly and regret as well. Sometimes they feel guilt, proud, sickly, depraved, perverse but ever alive. These are genuinely more refreshing than the flowery-all-environment-descriptive-and-vacuous-characters-and-no-plot-and-forever-WW2 historical fiction about Malaya that tend to be repetitive nowadays. It was a slow moving book with plot centered around the characters more. It was a time where we could appreciate the basic modern amenities we had today like the smooth road, refrigerator, the time when 50 cents can keep you fill. Those time when my grandparents lived and also those people who had once live and forgotten in modern graves.

In the midst of it, I adore Burgess's prose. The way he narrate travelling in fear of the things in the forest in those times when communist drive people into terrorism. The way he describe music : "It started : strings rising from A to a long held F, through E to E flat, when the woodwind came in with their bittersweet chords. Wagner's prolonged orgasm.". Often I became enraptured by his storytelling and the ease of his use to voice his characters which I never was good at. The dialogues were ever exciting and funny and truthfully it deserve a proper adaptation at least in audiobooks. If the copyright holder would consider it, it would be amazing to hear them coming alive. But I don't see anyone going to do it anytime soon. I even had a harder time trying to gain a copy of this book due to the ban and there's no e-book version of this. Which is sad, since Burgess is in every way, capture the essence of Malaya even better than the authors we have today trying to write about the long days that had waned.

[Zak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing that a Brit can write so vividly and richly about post-WWII Malaya. Burgess tells an often humorous story with a keen eye for detail and social mores. I enjoyed this very much and will definitely follow up on the other two books in this trilogy. [Final rating: 4.5*].

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first novel in Anthony Burgess’s anecdotal Malayan trilogy. Vividly rendered scenes and stories bedecked in typically elegant prose.

[Betawolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

As character comedy and 'wit', the two qualities praised on the binding, this would probably be sub-par for me. The humour rests mostly on how awful the characters all are, which is amusing for a bit but gradually just ends up depressing. The main character is a nasty alcoholic type, always borrowing or stealing money to get a drink, presuming on the hospitality of others and occasionally resorting to threats of violence to get his way. As part of the joke, he ends up rich beyond belief.

As plot also, it's not great. It doesn't really go anywhere, the various characters just find themselves mixed together and hang around drinking, the men telling stories while the woman cries because of how much she hates the country and wants to go home (her husband won't leave, though even he's not clear as to why).

Where the novel has some value, however, is in its highly-convincing sense of place. Burgess thrusts a stark, unfiltered view of Malaysia at us, an eastern melting-pot filled with grift and vice and hidden tensions. There is a lot of believable detail, and though I don't particularly like the sound of the seedy, sweaty setting, I can appreciate the effort taken to convey it.

[Jenny Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

For insight to the Malaysian Peninsular today read 'Time for a Tiger'. Whilst some espouses the racist mores of the times complete with themes of decay and decadence that ended the British Empire, other themes are remarkably contemporary and you realise how little has changed in the past fifty years. Attitudes I thought were only recent are explored, especially to Islam. Though perhaps (and I don't know) that adherence to Islamic law became less rigorous during the '70s and '80s and has now returned to the status held previously. And really the racist thinking hasn't really changed. Also it is a romping read and the characterisation is fantastic. It is a little 'soppy' in parts but even that was enjoyable and there is no sense of impending disaster, the disintegration comes slowly like the damp that quietly rots everything here, (unless one is hermetically sealed in air-conned buildings).
I found it strangely uplifting and in fact prompted me to watch a Singapore 'made-for-TV' movie from beginning to end.

[Xueqiang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burgess crafts such endearing characters — they seem to be extensions of himself. Each character carries compelling secrets and desires, which makes you follow the push and pull as they reconcile these inside and with the people around them. There were a few passing judgements that would have been deemed problematic today (racist caricatures, misogynistic views etc) but it was a necessary reflection of the zeitgeist through a white European gaze of 1950s Malaya — a melting pot and combustion of competing languages and cultures. A story about infidelity, shifting allegiances, and alcohol addiction.

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written about Malaya during the so-called Malayan Emergency, Anthony Burgess's Time for a Tiger does one thing quite well. It recreates the atmosphere and sense of place that is/was Malaya and Southeast Asia. But that's it. Attempts at wit and humor, so widely publicized for this book, fall flat. It is the picture of Britons out of place in a tropical environment that is too hot, too humid, and too disorderly for them that makes Time for a Tiger worth reading. And, for what it is worth, that picture of indolent, drunken, haughtiness is still true today for many British expatriates in Southeast Asia. Quite a few, if not most people from that overcast, cold island off the continent of Europe just do not belong--that is Burgess's main message. The imperial system that put them in place has none of the heroism and fortitude so often described in other literary works and British film of the era. Nabby Adams is the symbol for all the miscreants serving in the British army, while Boothby, the hypocritical martinet who is the headmaster of protagonist Victor Crabbe's school, demonstrates just how futile is the imposition of a British built educational system for meaningful education. (Again, for what it is worth, that situation still persists across Southeast Asia, with Asian hi-so's scrambling to get their children into snooty private British day schools. At the university level, you even have branch campuses of British and Australian universities sprouting up to impose their idea of an appropriate "universal" curriculum on different cultures--imperialism still going strong, today.)

Burgess attempts to use ironic contrasts to generate his humor. It mostly fails. The supposed to be comic figure of Nabby Adams instead comes off today (and probably back in 1956 even) as a pathetic functioning alcoholic. On the other hand, Victor Crabbe, while teaching his class of older Malay, Chinese, and Tamil students proves the point that every idealist is only one bad day from turning into a cynic. The one passage that did get me to smile was when Fennela, Victor's wife, eagerly anticipates her expedition into the jungle to observe a "native" dance and describes it all in a parody of James Frazer's Golden Bough.

[John Cooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful novel, Burgess observing a few of the types he knew in British Malaya in the mid-Fifties, representing the varied cultural and racial mix of the place. First part of his Malayan trilogy, so I'll need to read the other two before I comment further. Anyway, this was his first novel, and I loved it!

[Vikas Datta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful description of the Empire's waning days.... and that character of Alladad Khan is wonderful...

[Alesa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an example of colonial (or maybe immediately post-colonial) literature, about an expat community living in rural Malaya. The descriptions are breathtaking in their pithiness, and dry humor permeates every page like jungle rot. However, the subject is really depressing, namely the depression of heavy drinkers (many of them drunk most of the time) and womanizers stuck in dead-end employment, surrounded by armed Communists who are most eager to wreak havoc. We follow an optimistic school teacher and his miserable wife, who becomes friends with an alcoholic policeman, indebted to every little bar in the whole province. All are Brits, but there are a few Moslem characters thrown in too, all unhappily married. The novel might be considered a criticism of Brits overseas, but equally of the institution of marriage.

I decided not to read the next two books in the trilogy, despite my interest in SE Asian history, culture and politics, because I didn't experience any uplift in the first -- no moral transformation, or even hope. Here are two examples of some of the great descriptive, if biting, writing:

"The humidity could be blamed for many things: the need for a siesta, corpulence, the use of the car for a hundred-yard journey, the mildew on the shoes, the sweat-rot in the armpits of dresses, the lost bridge-rubber or tennis-set, the dislike felt for the whole country."

"The rain, like a football crowd, was waiting to charge and rush at the opening of the gates. The jungle that stood back sullenly and threateningly to let the road go through looked defiled and clotted in the thickening light. Mist rested halfway up the mountains. Soon the rain started in an orchestral roar."

Anthony Burgess is the author of Clockwork Orange, and one of the most highly acclaimed authors of the 20th century, according to Wikipedia. However, his Malayan Trilogy, of which this book is a part, is not one of his more well-known works.

[FP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es un momento serio: la federación malaya está próxima a independizarse del Imperio Británico y nuestro protagonista, Victor Crabbe, se siente un poco a la deriva en este nuevo mundo que no parece tan aceptador de los británicos, incluso de uno expatriado que lleva ya años viviendo en Malasia. A pesar de la seriedad del tema, Burgess escribe lo que es básicamente una trilogía picaresca a costillas de su personaje. El pobre Crabbe intenta servir a su país trabajando en la facultad y a la vez trata de moldear las mentes de los futuros líderes malayos, pero no consigue ningún respeto.
La novela abunda en juegos de palabras, lo que es fácil de realizar en una sociedad multilingüística y multicultural como Malasia, que ya estaba creando un buen caldo de cultivo de tensiones raciales y religiosas en ese entonces.

[Yazlina Saduri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where, who is the tiger? The beer? /huaaaaas. The Crabbes. Nabby Adams. Allahad Khan. This is one queer kind of a tale guys. If you are a Malaysian, you'll find it totally worth it. If you're a Malay, try very hard to read the book. I read plenty of rather disturbing info / observations / revelations? But I think they are all hugely interesting and gosh I'm grateful to be in the know of those "kisahnya".

Nabby Adams is quite a character I can't find in me to agree with his style but still, he probably is someone who's got good in his heart. Padan muka the shrewd shopkeeper. The lottery ticket found its way to the rightful winner haha.

I think the physical book is almost impossible to find now. If you are interested to read, contact the Admin of KedaiBukuSaduri. I'll share with you a way to read the Time for a Tiger. It would be really good if I can get another reader to review the book.

[liz Schreiber Tai · Rating 3 out of 5]

tida apa apa

[Zhi Yi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very beautiful book. The story was based in my hometown Kuala Kangsar. Burgess is a very talented writer, it's very comical and imagery, I can easily visualise the scenes in the book.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Burgess worked as an Education Officer for Britain in Malaya in the 1950s, and drew upon those experiences to write a trilogy about a character not too far removed from his own experience. I've only read the first of these books (Time for a Tiger), which introduces Victor Crabbe, an idealistic history teacher in a boys prep school populated by Chinese, Malay, Sikh, and various others.

The book opens with not Crabbe, but the perpetually drunk Transport Officer Nobby Adams. It's a colorfully virtuoso introduction that conveys a complete sense of the decay and desperation that pervaded the fringes of the crumbling British Empire in the 1950s. Adams and his Sikh deputy become strange sidekicks to Crabbe and his culture-craving wife, as they muddle through the day-to-day confusions of life in colonial Malaysia.

It's a fairly familiar and amusing satiric tale of colonial fish-out-of-water, and yet does a nice job getting into the heads of the non-white characters as well. For example, the Crabbe's gender-fluid and light-fingered houseboy, or the marital woes of the Sikh deputy, Alladad Khan. Despite its age, it's a very immersive work, you can feel the sweat of the characters, smell the foods, and hear the mix of languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, Urdu, and Malay words are mixed into everyone's speech, and there's an extensive glossary). Despite its age, definitely still worth a look by readers with an interest in Malaysia.

[Ash Hartwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A darkly comic look at the dog days of empire on the Malayan Peninsula. Superbly written with rich characterisation, Burgess follows the unlikely friendships of Victor Crabbe, an English teacher, where language, religion and political beliefs are just the start of their problems.

[❀ Hana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bahasa istana 'beradu' yang bermaksud tidur berasal usul dari pertandingan (beradu) menyanyi di kalangan para gundik raja, di mana pemenangnya akan dapat tidur bersama raja.

[Reads Books]

Zero stars. I could only stomach a few pages a time and really struggled to finish it.

For the benefit of those who don't know,
Lanchap = Masturbate
Tahi Panas = Hot Shit
Kuala Hantu = Ghost Estuary

And some background.
Burgess taught for a few years at Malay College Kuala Kangsar, which was set up by the British as "a special residential school for the education of Malays of good family and for the training of Malay boys for admission to certain branches of Government service". The British colonial strategy was basically to nuture the Malay elite and in turn receive cooperation/accomodation of British interests. The school was and still is open only to Malay students ("Malay" being a racial concept that the British eventually helped define). Yet in his novel written while he was teaching, all races of Malaya are represented, including a Eurasian, Bengali and Sikh. The school is truly fictitious. It seems he means for the school to be a microcosm of British Malaya. We're told:

The pupils themselves, through their prefects, pressed the advantages of a racial division. The Chinese feared that the Malays would run amok in the dormitories and use knives; the Malays said they did not like the smell of the Indians; the various Indian races preferred to conduct vendettas only among themselves. Besides, there was the question of food. The Chinese cried out for pork which, to the Muslims, was haram and disgusting; the Hindus would not eat meat at all, despite the persuasions of the British matron; other Indians demanded burning curries and could not stomach the insipid lauk of the Malays. Finally the houses were given the names of Britons who had helped to build the new Malaya. Allocation to houses was arbitrary—the dormitories buzzed with different prayers in different tongues—and everybody had to eat cold rice with a warmish lauk of buffalo meat or vegetables. Nobody was satisfied but nobody could think of anything better.

Imagine what these yellow and brown people will do to one another without the British! And just to be sure, that was written in the authorial voice.

Imagine if you will, in the year 2018, an expat from China teaching at the London branch of the Confucius Institute (sponsored by the communist government in Beijing). He sets out to write the quintessential English novel (in Chinese) based on his reading of English history and his personal observations and interactions. He sets his novel in the town of 'Shit' in the district of 'Wank'. He tells you about the students from different social classes attending his class and how the Chinese style of discipline is barely keeping things together, recounts interactions with the smelly brown people, ugly black people and pale white ghosts in town, includes an episode of a muslim terrorist bomb blowing up a London bus, and tells you about the corruption and frustrations of the expat Chinese in his social circle, and how he'd much rather be back at home in China than be stuck in this thankless position as cultural ambassador for the motherland.

What kind of reviews is such a novel likely to get? I can tell you it's written in top notch Chinese prose and the author has a wicked sense of humour!

The sad thing is that a good number of Malaysians are so used to seeing themselves and one another through the eyes of the British colonial master that this passes for respectable literature.

[Bivisyani Questibrilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knowing Anthony Burgess first from A Clockwork Orange, I really expected a lot of quirks to be injected into this work. While the writing style that is prevalent in A Clockwork Orange never really made an appearance in this one, Anthony Burgess is still a force to be reckoned with. His linguistics affinity is still very much apparent in this title.

The story is pretty simple, following mainly three main characters—all of whom happens to be men. There's Victor Crabbe, the well-intentioned British teacher at a local school who sympathises with the Malays and seem to put distance between him and the rest of the White blokes. Then there's Nabby Adams, a police officer whose only passion seems to be alcohols and would much rather stay in India as he speaks fluent Urdu. Lastly, there's Aladad Khan, a Punjab police officer who marries within his clan for the family's sake but is miserable because of it. As an extra, Victor's wife Fenella Crabbe often joins the three of them on any number of shenanigans as well, although her perspective and story is less explored than the rest of them.

Personally, I've always enjoyed post-war stories like this. It really shows the inevitable contrast between the Asian locals and the White colonies who often fail to see eye to eye with each other. It almost doesn't matter where the story is set, so long as it is in Asia, any Asian country can relate to them on a historical level. The characters always tend to be the same as well, although may be told through different stylings and characterisations. They will mainly include a white man who believes he sympathises with the locals, a white man who despises the locals, a white man who prefers a different version of Asia, a white woman who becomes the object of desire of affection for the locals, and a local who wishes he is white.

Story-wise, I don't see anything particularly special about this one compared to other post-war stories. The characters, as I've mentioned above, are fairly similar. They all start off not liking their respective situations—whether professionally, geographically or marriage-wise. The story follows no real or permanent repercussions for the country of dwelling (in this case, Malaya). That being said, I find the book all in all pretty enjoyable. The story develops very nicely. The characters' arcs and chemistry are believable and seem to grow naturally. The writing style makes the whole story all the more interesting—the character stints are so immaculately done. And Burgess does the Orient justice through his writings—it's clear he adores Malaya, to a degree at least.

All I can say is that I can't wait to continue the journey to the second installment of this trilogy.

[Prashanth Srivatsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's undoubtedly funny. Burgess, of the Clockwork Orange fame, knocks at your ribs and politely cracks it at regular intervals as post-war (mid 50's) Malaya is dissected to its wet core. Britishers, Indians, Malays and others whose identities we are never sure of gather, drink (the eponymous beer Tiger), and enter into wild streams of consciousness, where each character, and decadently hilarious ones at that, swim in their own tides of racism, communism and religion. There is much to be observed and learned in the Muslim's sheer euphoria at having found out about his brother-in-law's own debauchery and neglect of his caste, the very person who has been chastising him within those boundaries. There is even more to be learned of Crabbe's circumspect maneuvering of his class students' rebellion against the suspension of kids caught in the act unsuitable for their age. Little peeks of freedom in what is otherwise a country that has come no farther than it had been a few decades ago. You then sense an underlying theme, not of progress, but of a lazy attempt towards it.

[Carole · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first in Burgess' Malayan trilogy, set in the waning days of the British Empire in this far east setting. I loved J.G. Farrell's Empire Trilogy, a hilarious account of oblivious British behavior in the face of the drastically deteriorating conditions. This is one of those "if you liked x (Farrell trilogy), you will like z (Burgess trilogy)" referrals. Tiger was interesting in terms of the milieu and multitudinous ethnic players. There was humor and a plethora of colorful characters. However, it doesn't seem to have the depth or razor sharp sense of irony of the Farrell novels. Nevertheless, it addressed my curiosity about the Malay States (whatever happened to them) and my current interest in the legacy of colonialism on the modern political world. It also provided a few chuckles, but they were kind of one dimensional and repetitious. I am not rushing to read volumes 2 and 3, but will get to them one day.

[Elisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Burgess' entire Malayan trilogy back-to-back, and while I found instalments #1 and #2 the stronger of the bunch, #3 left me with a satisfying yet disenchanting conclusion.

What to say to summarise the reading experience? I was often entertained, I gained some bonus historical knowledge along the way, and I was expectedly uncomfortable at regular intervals. Burgess characters are comedic, overdrawn, excessively stereotyped, often nobody is sympathetic. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was listening to somebody having a grand time letting me in on his inside jokes while I listened on in befuddled horror.

Still, a worthwhile read for the perspective, and an oddly fun one at that.

[Syed Emir Ashman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dedicated in Jawi to his friends in Tanah Melayu, this is truly a gem of a book. The inside jokes begin almost immediately - I am sorry to say that if you are not Malaysian (culturally), then you will miss a lot of it.

Burgess was a former Colonial Officer when Malaya was ran administratively by the British. It is clear that he really took an effort to imbibe the culture of the country. His insights into the eccentric nature of this hetrogeneous nation in the course of his hilarious novel are accurate as they are delightful. I am looking forward to the next two novels of this trilogy.

[Donny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could see the merit in this, especially with the first scene, but it's the first book in a while Ive decided to give up on and the following books, only making it to page 78. I'm sure it'd be great for somebody with knowledge of the area or period. I had to decipher every second sentence with its Malay terminology and names, couldn't get a flow on where I could find enough enjoyment.

[Jupri Zulprianto]

One of the things I like reading a novel that is set in our cultural settings and that is written by a foreigner is that it forces us to look at ourselves differently. For me it's an enrichment of viewpoint.

[Les Dangerfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a reread, having read it back in the late 70s I think. This first of the Malayan trilogy was disappointing this time round. Is it because I have since lived there, perhaps? Perhaps books two and three will be better.

[Shane Avery · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I don't really like Burgess. The writing on the other hand is hard not to admire. It's sad that civilization is dead on arrival.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather light stuff for Burgess, but entertaining enough.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting introduction to ex pat life in post war Malay(sia). Navy Adams was a standout character.