The work describes a period of over 40 years from Burgess's birth, in 1917, to 1959, when his time as teacher and education officer in Malaya and Borneo came to an end.
One of the most significant literary autobiographies in English of the latter part of the 20th century, the book has been described[by whom?] as resembling a picaresque novel in the vividness of its descriptions and its readability.
Roger Lewis opined that "It is perhaps Burgess's memoirs...which constitute his best novels, his masterpieces."[1]