The Long Day Wanes [review]
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Crabbe found himself set upon by starving rajahs who stabbed forks into his hand. They stabbed indiscriminately -- here a slice of dried-up beef, there a chicken-wing, here a dripping hunk of cold curried mutton, there a human hand. Talbot fought his way out, protesting loudly, holding his spoils clear of the stabbing. From the dark recesses of the Hall odd dark men had appeared, the scavengers...rank was forgotten in this elemental clawing for food. The essential Malaya is jungle.
Full Title:
The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy
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I'd no idea that Anthony Burgess (of A Clockwork Orange fame) had lived in Malaysia, learned Malay, and written a whole trilogy about the country under British rule, no less. Having read it, I'm quite sure it's banned in Malaysia, which explains why I've never heard of it. It's full of extraordinarily blunt (and dryly eloquent) observations about race politics in British Malaya, Islam as a religion, life in smalltown Malayan kampungs, Malaya under colonial rule. There's not an ounce of vitriole in Burgess' depiction of Malaya and its constituent races, and it doesn't compromise on Malaya's social, political and racial complexities -- although certain offhand remarks are evidently gleaned from things Burgess must have heard in passing, and are thus somewhat inaccurate: his confusion of yin and yang, for example. But on the whole it's beautifully neutral.
The quote above is Burgess' observation of a Malayan buffet dinner scene, and I'll assure non-Malaysian readers that in the 50 odd years since the book was published, not very much has essentially changed about the way Malaysians conduct themselves in all-you-can-eat circumstances :)
and this quote
(Sultan Aladdin) found it easy to see that the future of Malaya in general, and of Lanchap in particular, rested not with the Malays alone but with the harmonious working-together of all the component races. He had few illusions about his own people: amiable, well-favoured, courteous, they loved rest better than industry; through them the peninsula would never advance — rather their function was to remind the toiling Chinese, Indians and British of the ultimate vanity of labour.
is, I think, a perfect example of two things: a) Burgess' neutrality in his discussions of race, and b) one of the many reasons why this book will probably never be especially vaunted in Malaysia today.