The Long Day Wanes

A Malayan Trilogy

by Anthony Burgess

Also known as the "Malayan Trilogy," Burgess's THE LONG DAY WANES was originally published in three volumes. In the first, Victor Crabbe, a British schoolmaster, arrives in Malaya in search of a new life and a new culture in which he can escape the guilt he feels over the accidental drowning death of his first wife. In the second volume Crabbe meets Rupert Herdman, an albino lawyer, who is adjusting to Malayan culture by marrying a Muslim woman who is attracted to his professionalism and his "very white" skin. Meanwhile Crabbe is having an affair with a married woman who vaguely resembles his dead wife and he begins to hope, in the context of his newly adopted culture, that he might find her reincarnated soul somehow. In the third volume Crabbe becomes eager to give something back to Malaya and discovers a young musician, a Chinese boy, whom he feels could be Malaya's answer to Jean Sibelius, uniting the country with music. The scheme is doomed, but Crabbe dies in a freak accident before he can learn the extent of his failure.

Editions of The Long Day Wanes

	ISBN 9780393309430	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher W W Norton & Co Inc	Date 1993	Price $9.36	NEW
	ISBN 9780393008647	Binding/Format Book	Publisher Norton	Date 1977	Price $14.53	Very Good

Publisher Notes

Set in postwar Malaya at the time when people and governments alike are bemused and dazzled by the turmoil of independence, this three-part novel is rich in hilarious comedy and razor-sharp in observation. The protagonist of the work is Victor Crabbe, a teacher in a multiracial school in a squalid village, who moves upward in position as he and his wife maintain a steady decadent progress backward. A sweetly satiric look at the twilight days of colonialism.

Media Reviews

"The first thing that can be said about this book is that it lives up to its title....I believe, as [Mr. Burgess] does not, that individual words can have beauty in themselves, and I also dispute his assertion that no language can be described as either beautiful or ugly. I also am impatient with his impatience regarding the value of certain component letters in their effect both on the spoken and the written word. There, Shakespeare is the great instructor. In spite of these differences, I admire this book, and recommend it srongly to anyone genuinely interested in the miracle of language."

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