Sholto Byrnes “goes to Malaysia in pursuit of Anthony Burgess.”
“For, as his biographer Roger Lewis puts it: ‘John Wilson went to Malaya and came back as Anthony Burgess.’ The man who was to go on to write such celebrated novels as Earthly Powers and A Clockwork Orange - and to assume the persona of the pseudonym he wrote under - finally found his voice in a country where the white man's role was to prepare three races, the Malays, Chinese and Indians, for independence; and, while he was at it, to try to avoid being shot or garrotted by the Communist insurgents who lurked nearby in the omnipresent rainforests.” – from “In Pursuit of Anthony Burgess: Bell Bottoms in the Rainforest,” by Sholto Byrnes, The Independent