The Year of Living Dangerously (novel)

:"This article is about the novel. See The Year of Living Dangerously for the film.

"The Year of Living Dangerously" is a novel by Christopher Koch, which was made into a film in 1982, directed by Peter Weir and written by Koch, Weir, and David Williamson.

The story is a complicated psychological plot set in Indonesia during the overthrow of President Sukarno. It follows a group of expatriate journalists in Jakarta before and around a supposed coup attempt by the Communist Party of Indonesia on September 30, 1965. These events were pivotal in shaping the modern history of Indonesia.

The title "The Year of Living Dangerously" is a quote which refers to a famous Italian phrase used by Sukarno; "vivere pericoloso", which was supposed to mean "living dangerously". Sukarno borrowed the line for the title of his National Day speech of August 17, 1964.

Plot

Guy Hamilton, a neophyte foreign correspondent for an Australian network, arrives in Jakarta on assignment. He meets the close-knit members of the foreign correspondent community including foreign journalists, diplomatic personnel, and a Chinese-Australian dwarf of high intelligence and moral seriousness, Billy Kwan.

Guy is initially unsuccessful because his predecessor, tired of life in Indonesia, has departed without introducing Hamilton to his contacts, and Guy receives only limited sympathy from the journalist community, which competes for scraps of information from Sukarno's government, the (Communist) PKI and the military. However, Billy Kwan takes a liking to Guy and gets him interviews, and Guy's reputation soars.

Billy introduces Guy to Jill Bryant, a beautiful young assistant at the British embassy. Billy and Jill are close friends, and Billy subtly manipulates Guy and Jill's encounters. After initially resisting Guy because she's returning to the UK, Jill falls in love with an equally smitten Guy.

Jill discovers that the Communist Chinese are planning to arm the PKI and passes this information to Guy. Guy wants to cover the Communist rebellion that he believes will occur when the arms shipment reaches Jakarta.

Guy visits Central Java and accompanies a march of PKI sympathizers marching towards the capital, and at one point his car is surrounded by a hostile crowd and he fears for his life. Upon returning to Jakarta, Guy accompanies one of his fellow journalists, Pete Curtis, on a visit to a seedy area of the city in search of prostitutes, but then realizes his folly.

At the expat bar in the luxury hotel (Hotel Indonesia) where Guy is based, Billy outs one of Guy's fellow foreign correspondents who has been having homosexual relationships with Indonesian men. As a result Billy is ostracized and loses contact with Guy and the rest of the foreign correspondent community, leaving Guy to depend on his assistant Kumar, who is secretly PKI.

Billy has become outraged by Sukarno's failure to meet the needs of most Indonesians, including a poor woman he's helped who has lost her child. He decides to hang an anti-Sukarno banner from a window in Hotel Indonesia, which Sukarno is about to visit, but Billy falls from the window and is found dead. Guy and Jill are present at the hotel at the time, and Guy becomes aware of evidence that Billy was shot before his fall by agents of the Indonesian security service.

Following Billy's death, Guy drives to Billy's bungalow to remove files that Billy has been furtively compiling on various subjects including the various foreign correspondents in Jakarta, as well as Jill and Sukarno.

Guy, who is still in search of "the big story", then visits the Presidential palace following reports of a coup. Guy is viciously struck down by an Army officer, suffering an injury that threatens to blind him in one eye.

Guy rests alone in an apartment rented by the British Embassy. Kumar visits him, but Guy fails to persuade him to abandon the PKI. Risking permanent damage to his eye, Guy disregards his doctor's advice and insists on being driven to the airport. He leaves Jakarta and is reunited with Jill, who is now pregnant, and the two fly to Europe.

References

External links

* [http://mchip00.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/koch1593-des-.html Brief summary]