The Enemy in the Blanket

Blurb

The Enemy in the Blanket is the second novel in Anthony Burgess's Malayan Trilogy The Long Day Wanes. The title is a literal translation of the Malay idiom "musuh dalam selimut", which means to be betrayed by an intimate, alluding to the struggles of marriage but also other betrayals in the story. The novel charts the continuing adventures of Victor Crabbe, who becomes headmaster of a school in the imaginary sultanate of Dahaga 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, 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: "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."