About the book (from Wikipedia):
The Malayan Trilogy, also published as The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy in the United States, is a comic ‘triptych’ of novels by Anthony Burgess on the decolonisation of Malaya.
It is a detailed fictional exploration of the effects of the Malayan Emergency and of Britain’s final pull-out from its Southeast Asian territories. The American title, decided on by Burgess himself, is taken from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem Ulysses: ‘The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: | The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep | Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, | ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.’ (ll. 55-57)
The three volumes are:
Time for a Tiger (1956)
The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)
Beds in the East (1959)
The trilogy tracks the fortunes of the history teacher Victor Crabbe, his professional difficulties, his marriage problems, and his attempt to do his duty in the war against the insurgents. For plot details, see the pages on the component titles Time for a Tiger, The Enemy in the Blanket and Beds in the East.
About Anthony Burgess (from Wikipedia):
John Anthony Burgess Wilson, FRSL (25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993) – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English writer and composer. From relatively modest beginnings in a Catholic family in Manchester, he eventually became one of the best known English literary figures of the latter half of the twentieth century.
Although Burgess was predominantly a comic writer, his dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange remains his best known novel. In 1971 it was adapted into a highly controversial film by Stanley Kubrick, which Burgess said was chiefly responsible for the popularity of the book. Burgess produced numerous other novels, including the Enderby quartet, and Earthly Powers, regarded by most critics as his greatest novel. He wrote librettos and screenplays, including for the 1977 TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth. He worked as a literary critic, including for The Observer and The Guardian, and wrote studies of classic writers, notably James Joyce. A versatile linguist, Burgess lectured in phonetics, and translated Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus the King and the opera Carmen, among others.
Burgess also composed over 250 musical works; he sometimes claimed to consider himself as much a composer as an author, although he enjoyed considerably more success in writing.
