The Year of Living Dangerously

Publisher's synopsis

The charismatic god-king Sukarno has brought Indonesia to the edge of chaos – to an abortive revolution that will leave half a million dead. For the Western correspondents here, this gathering apocalypse is their story and their drug, while the sufferings of the Indonesian people are scarcely real: a shadow play. Working at the eye of the storm are television correspondent Guy Hamilton and his eccentric dwarf cameraman Billy Kwan. In Kwan’s secret fantasy life, both Sukarno and Hamilton are heroes. But his heroes betray him, and Billy is driven to desperate action. As the Indonesian shadow play erupts into terrible reality, a complex personal tragedy of love, obsession and betrayal comes to its climax.

Awards

Winner 1978 Age Book of the Year Award
Winner 1979 National Book Council Award for Australian Literature

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Christopher Koch

Christopher Koch was born and educated in Tasmania. Most of his life was spent in Sydney, where he worked for some years as a radio producer in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He was a full-time writer from 1972, winning international praise and a number of awards for his novels. One of his novels, The Year of Living Dangerously, was made into a film by Peter Weir. Koch twice won the Miles Franklin Award for fiction: for The Doubleman and Highways to a War. In 1995 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his contribution to Australian literature. Christopher Koch passed away on September 22nd 2013

Further Details

Author Christopher Koch

Publisher HarperCollins Publishers Australia

Date of Publication 1978

ISBN 9781743098417 (print)

Category Novels