Roughly a year ago, I wanted to read more of Burgess’ work. Specifically, I was aiming for The Long Day Wanes, also known as the Malayan Trilogy. I looked for it but the search was unsuccessful. In place of the trilogy, I bought Burgess’ The Wanting Seed instead. Interesting read but I wish I had bought The Long Day Wanes. I tried my luck at several other stores looking for it for several weeks but the effort proved futile.
Sure, there’s Amazon. However, the shipping cost is more than 100% of the novel’s price. I’m not willing to pay that much for it.
A few days ago, I found out the reason why it’s hard to find the trilogy through a post by Sharon Bakar. According to a list compiled by local authority, as provided by Silverfish Books, the Malayan Trilogy is banned in Malaysia. More specifically, it is “restricted”.
Interestingly enough, Making Globalization Work by Prize in Economics winner, Joseph Stiglitz is also banned.
Anyway, I and few friends plan to gather together and discuss about book censorship in a few weeks time. The list provided by Silverfish is not the impetus for the discussion however. Nevertheless, it provides a nice background for the discussion. So, here I am, opening the invitation to my readers. If you’re interested, just howl at me.
Nothing concrete has been planned yet. So please be patience at the rate which information flows out.
3 replies on “[941] Of Burgess’ banned in Malaysia”
Actually, the trilogy is freely available for sale in more than one edition in Kinokuniya in KLCC, floor 4, so I assume that, even if it was banned in 2006, this is no longer the case. I saw it sitting on the shelf there two days ago. It’s also very reasonable priced at about 44RM for the Penguin edition.
[…] thought the Malayan Trilogy by Anthony Burgess was still banned in Malaysia and so I stopped looking for it. Very unlike the effort, my interest in the novel did not die out […]
[…] me, given the Malaysian authority’s tendency to ban the most innocent of all books such as Anthony Burgess’ Malayan Trilogy and Karen Amstrong’s A History of God, is that The God Delusion escapes censorship. The […]