Time for a Tiger is part one of Anthony Burgess's Malayan Trilogy The Long Day Wanes, "the first panel of a triptych" set in the twilight of British rule of the peninsula.
Dedicated, in Jawi script on the first page of the book, "to all my Malayan friends" ("Kepada sahabat-sahabat saya di Tanah Melayu"), it was Burgess's first published work of fiction and appeared in 1956.
The title alludes to an advertising slogan for Tiger beer, then, as now, ...
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Time for a Tiger is part one of Anthony Burgess's Malayan Trilogy The Long Day Wanes, "the first panel of a triptych" set in the twilight of British rule of the peninsula.
Dedicated, in Jawi script on the first page of the book, "to all my Malayan friends" ("Kepada sahabat-sahabat saya di Tanah Melayu"), it was Burgess's first published work of fiction and appeared in 1956.
The title alludes to an advertising slogan for Tiger beer, then, as now, popular in the Malay peninsula.
The action centres on the vicissitudes of Victor Crabbe, a history teacher at an elite school for all the peninsula's ethnic groups — Malay, Chinese and Indian — the Mansor School, in Kuala Hantu (modelled on the Malay College at Kuala Kangsar, Perak).
Victor Crabbe, a resident teacher at the Mansor School, seeks to tackle the threat posed by a boy Communist who appears to be conducting clandestine night-time indoctrination sessions with fellow students. But the headmaster, Boothby, scoffs at Crabbe's warnings....
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