Maugham’s Malaya mostly reveals the lives of the colonial Europeans, primarily the English and Dutch who went to South-East Asia to work in the rubber industry. The characters who observe and narrate the action include Malays, Indians, Chinese, Tamils, Sikhs, and people of multiple heritage. The Malayan Trilogy, following the adventures of a colonial education officer, makes strenuous efforts to describe the lives of the local population, and to reflect the diversity of the people who called Malaya home. The Malaya of Maugham’s stories is very unlike the place depicted in Burgess’s early fiction. The primary sources for this version of Malaya were Somerset Maugham’s short stories set there, which form a substantial volume of his Collected Short Stories. Kenneth Toomey visits Malaya in the 1920s, when colonialism seemed to be flourishing in the towns, plantations and kampongs. In Earthly Powers, Burgess’s experiences of Malaya are blended with other sources to create a facsimile of a period in the country that he did not witness. Later novels, such as Beard’s Roman Women and Nothing Like the Sun, also show some influence of Burgess’s time in Malaya. The three volumes of The Malayan Trilogy fictionalise some of the scenes he witnessed in Kuala Kangsar in the state of Perak and Kota Bharu in Kelantan.
These events inevitably influenced his fiction. He was a witness to the brutal civil war known as the ‘Emergency’ and the final days of the British Empire leading up to the declaration of Merdeka (Independence) in 1957. The Earthly Powers Bookshelf charts that literary map, using as its base Burgess’s library at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation.Īnthony Burgess lived and worked in the Federation of Malaya between 19. Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers is a book made up of other books.
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