Devil of a State

Devil of a State is a 1961 novel by Anthony Burgess based on his experience living and working in Bandar Seri Begawan in the Southeast Asian sultanate of Brunei, on the island of Borneo, in 1958-59.

Contents

• In search of burgess brunei devil of a state
• Characters and plot
• References

It is the fourth of what have been classed as Burgess's "exotic novels", the others being Time for a Tiger, The Enemy in the Blanket and Beds in the East.

For libel reasons the action had to be transposed to an imaginary East African caliphate called "Dunia" and a UN representative substituted for the British Adviser. In his autobiography Little Wilson and Big God, Being the First Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess (1987) Burgess writes:

This novel was, is, about Brunei, which was renamed Naraka, Malayo-Arabic for hell. Little invention was needed to contrive a large cast of unbelievable characters and a number of interwoven plots.Though completed in 1958, the work was not published until 1961, for what it was worth it was made a choice of the book society. Heinemann, my publisher, was doubtfull about publishing it: it might be libelous. I had to change the setting from Borneo to an East African one. Heinemann was right to be timorous. In early 1958 'The Enemy in the Blanket' appeared and this at once provoked a libel suit.