The Malayan Trilogy

Nov 27, 2025 1:59 AM

Author:Anthony Burgess

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.

Reviews

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

That peerless drama of divided selves and doppelgangers

—— Maggie O’Farrell , Observer

One of the great English gothic novels. Some would say, simply, that it is one of the great novels

—— Daily Mail

An extraordinary, irreducible fantasy

—— Observer

Burgess's ambitious study of 20th-century history centers on the stormy relationship between an effete, popular novelist and a Faustian priest

—— Publishers Weekly

It is glitzy, glamorous, page-turning stuff with bite

—— Sarah Broadhurst

Chilling...will keep you guessing until the end

—— Psychologies

Chilling psychological thriller... Fact and fiction are cleverly blurred, and the intricately plotted spins and turns will keep you guessing till the end

—— Glamour

Intriguing... Real life tangles with his fantasy online world to create a heart-stopping page-turner

—— Good Housekeeping

Blueeyedboy is unquestionably a masterpiece of deception and fantasy

—— Oxford Times

A dark exploration into the mind of an internet-obsessed would-be killer

—— Red

Creepy psychodrama...BB's voice soon takes on the seductive cadences of her Gallic creations. Harris's triumph is to incorporate email-speak into this tale of rural nasties without frightening the horses

—— Independent

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