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Nick Walker

Time for a Tiger  
by Anthony Burgess  
(Heinemann)        
Judged by The Times of London  to have been one of Britain's 50 greatest postwar writers, the late Anthony Burgess' most famous novel remains his 1962 dystopian shocker, A Clockwork Orange. But Burgess also wrote the definitive novel of expatriate life in 1950s Malaysia, or Malaya as it was known pre-independence.
Set during the dog days of British colonial decline in Southeast Asia, Time for a Tiger is part one of his celebrated Malayan trilogy, as well as a fine standalone work.
With his debut novel, Burgess found himself following  other Britons who wrote stories from the tropical reaches of the Orient, such as Kipling, Conrad, Maugham, Orwell, and Greene. 
Burgess - like Orwell, who had a reasonable grasp of both Urdu and Burmese, and Kipling who spoke Hindi - took the trouble to learn the language of the society he depicted. 
A renowned multiple-linguist, Burgess  spoke and wrote excellent Malay, hence the authenticity and cross-cultural sensitivity of the lively  Time for a Tiger.
The story of the novel began when Burgess left his teaching job in rural Oxfordshire in 1954 to join the British Colonial Service in Malaya. His first posting was at the prestigious Malay College Kuala Kangsar (MCKK), and it's on his experiences there, as a teacher of history and English, that he draws from for Time for a Tiger.
The action swirls around a distinctly peculiar quartet: Victor Crabbe, a history teacher at an elite school on the Malay peninsula, Crabbe's wife Fenella, Nabby Adams, an alcoholic policeman, for whom it is always time for a Tiger, or an Anchor, or a Carlsberg, and Alladad Khan, Adams' subordinate, who falls in love with Fenella.
All these characters are enduring, even the bumbling Crabbe who is anxious to teach the natives the ways of the West. He duly comes unstuck of course, time and time again. A good supporting cast too, thanks mainly to Crabbe's servant Ibrahim, and to Hari Singh the Sikh.
Time for a Tiger is very much a tale of its time. Crabbe is trying to sniff out what he perceives as a communist ring in the school, at a time when the colony is  rocked by a communist insurrection. Tense local politics are skilfully dove-tailed into the generally comedic proceedings. 
The observant Burgess  crafted an enduring 'old Asia hand' novel, which deserves bookshelf space with like-minded perennials such  as The Quiet American and Burmese Days.
The two sequels, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958) and Beds in the East (1959), further track the expatriate experience of Crabbe, and his staffroom woes, marriage problems, and ineffectual role against the reds in the jungle.  



BOOK (1956)