Did I really write in a past post that I had picked up a beautiful hardcover - which on the inside still carried the MPH-sticker of what used to be Malaysia's best-known bookshop - of Anthony Burgess' little-known "Beds in the East", so little-known that I had never heard of it?
Only a few pages into the slim only-200-page-thick book I knew where I had read it all before, as it was the final part of his "Malayan Trilogy". The three books – "Time for a Tiger", "The Enemy in the Blanket" and "Beds in the East" – form, in Burgess' words, a kind of triptych view on the fading sunset of British imperialism in Asia. Its central character is one Victor Crabbe, who, like Burgess, works as an education officer in Malaya and finds himself entangled in the machinations of the country’s struggle for independence. And while Crabbe remains the constant protagonist across the three novels, his story is buttressed by a richly drawn cast of supporting characters reflecting the multicultural makeup of Malaya at the time – a country populated by Chinese, Indians, Arab Muslims, expat Brits and, of course, the native Malayans themselves.
By the time I had got a few pages into the book, I was completely committed to this hilarious exploration of the expat experience and transported back to my own time in Pulau Pinang in the laste 1970s. Then, all too soon, it was time for a Chicken Chow Mein lunch and a Tiger, but being no longer in Malaysia, a Hahn Premium Light had to do.
