Anthony Burgess

Time for a Tiger

Prashanth Srivatsa

It's undoubtedly funny. Burgess, of the Clockwork Orange fame, knocks at your ribs and politely cracks it at regular intervals as post-war (mid 50's) Malaya is dissected to its wet core. Britishers, Indians, Malays and others whose identities we are never sure of gather, drink (the eponymous beer Tiger), and enter into wild streams of consciousness, where each character, and decadently hilarious ones at that, swim in their own tides of racism, communism and religion. There is much to be observed and learned in the Muslim's sheer euphoria at having found out about his brother-in-law's own debauchery and neglect of his caste, the very person who has been chastising him within those boundaries. There is even more to be learned of Crabbe's circumspect maneuvering of his class students' rebellion against the suspension of kids caught in the act unsuitable for their age. Little peeks of freedom in what is otherwise a country that has come no farther than it had been a few decades ago. You then sense an underlying theme, not of progress, but of a lazy attempt towards it.

Time for a Tiger

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