Time for a Tiger

Infobox Book |
name = Time for a Tiger
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = First edition cover
author = Anthony Burgess
cover_artist =
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series = The Long Day Wanes
genre = Colonial novel
publisher = Heinemann
release_date = 1956
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages =
ISBN = NA
preceded_by =
followed_by = The Enemy in the Blanket

"Time for a Tiger" is part one of Anthony Burgess's Malayan Trilogy "The Long Day Wanes", "the first panel of a triptych" set in the twilight of British rule of the peninsula.

Dedicated, in Jawi script on the first page of the book, "to all my Malayan friends", it was Burgess's first published work of fiction and appeared in 1956.

The title alludes to an advertising slogan for Tiger beer, then, as now, popular in the Malay peninsula.

The action centres on the vicissitudes of Victor Crabbe, a history teacher at an elite school for all the peninsula's ethnic groups — Malay, Chinese and Indian — the Mansor School, in Kuala Hantu (modelled on the Malay College at Kuala Kangsar, Perak).

Characters and plot

Victor Crabbe, a resident teacher at the Mansor School, seeks to tackle the threat posed by a boy Communist who appears to be conducting clandestine night-time indoctrination sessions with fellow students. But the headmaster, Boothby, scoffs at Crabbe's warnings.

Nabby Adams, an alcoholic police lieutenant who prefers warm beer ("he could not abide it cold"), persuades Crabbe to buy a car, enabling Adams to make a commission as a middleman. This is despite the fact that Crabbe cannot drive.

Crabbe's marriage to the blonde Fenella is crumbling, while he carries on an affair with a Malay divorcee employed at a nightclub. A junior police officer who works for Adams, Alladad Khan, falls in love with Fenella. Ibrahim bin Mohamed Salleh, a (married) gay cook, falls in love with Crabbe.

The threads of the plot come together when Adams drives Crabbe and Fenella in their new car on a drunken trip into the jungle, where they face ambush by Chinese terrorists. They return late to the school's speech day and an embarrassing denouement.