The Enemy in the Blanket | |
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First edition cover |
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Author(s) | Anthony Burgess |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Series | The Long Day Wanes |
Genre(s) | Colonial novel |
Publisher | Heinemann |
Publication date | 1958 |
Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
ISBN | NA |
Preceded by | Time for a Tiger |
Followed by | Beds in the East |
The Enemy in the Blanket (1958) is the second novel in Anthony Burgess's Malayan Trilogy The Long Day Wanes. The idiom in the title signifies "traitor" while also alluding to the struggles of marriage. The novel charts the continuing adventures of Victor Crabbe, who becomes headmaster of a school in the imaginary sultanate of Dahanga in the years and months leading up to Malayan independence.
Burgess was dismayed by the design of the cover of the 1958 Heinemann edition of the novel (pictured right), presumably designed in London. It shows a Sikh working as a ricksha-puller, something unheard of in Malaya or anywhere else. He wrote in his autobiography (Little Wilson and Big God, p. 416): "The design on [the] dust-jacket showed a Sikh pulling a white man and woman in a jinrickshaw. I, who had always looked up to publishers, was discovering that they could be as inept as authors. The reviewers would blame me, not the cover-designer, for that blatant display of ignorance."
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