Genre: Historical Fiction
What I really liked: Short
Me as a human, have never been interested in politics. That already keeps me away from books about politics. ‘The Year of Living Dangerously’ is historical fiction with Indonesian politics as a central theme. Yet, this book held my attention with its writing style. I could very easily relate with the Hindu Gods that have been mentioned. It was a unique style of comparing & contrasting characters with Gods based on traits. This is the first time I read a book with a dwarf as the main character. It was so refreshing and very different than the things already known and perceived.
There were multiple instances where I was little lost concerning chapters. I would have found my way back easier if the chapters had names.
Overall a good read- it made it to my list of “different and tried”


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We tend to mark the passage of time more in decades than years. Something about a larger number of days, months, and years gives us perspective. But some decades become lost. In the twentieth century, that is true, I think, for the 1920s and 1970s (and it may become true for the 1990s). The preceding and following decades tended to nibble into both the 1920s and 1970s. Like the 1920s and the aftermath of World War I, the first few years of the 1970s dealt with a lingering war, Vietnam, that had impacted not just the United States and Southeast Asia but the world at large. And like the 1920s again, with the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929, the last year of the 1970s slipped back into a renewal of the Cold War leading to the ultimate demise of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia. The 1970s, it seems actually existed for but a small span of time, for three or four years from 1975 to 1979. And right in the middle of them appeared Christopher J. Koch's novel, The Year of Living Dangerously.

Koch seems to realize he has managed to place his narrative in a unique time. Part of that is brought about through the skillful use of a narrator, "Cookie" (Koch himself). Why skillful? Because the setting of the story is 1965 Indonesia, during the last year of Sukarno's dictatorship. To tell it solely from that viewpoint would have made it too immediate. And the story needs distance. After all, it is told in a semi-nostalgic tone, which is also loaded with the wisdom of age and its accompanying skepticism rather than youthful disillusionment and cynicism. The 13 year gap provides that, as does shifting the point of view of the story from Guy Hamilton, the Australian journalist at the middle of it all, to Hamilton's friend and confidante, Cookie. It is all of a time with its particular era, because the late 1970s, or the "true 1970s," themselves reflected that same exhaustion and skepticism towards anything other than the personal in life.

That is the real story of The Year of Living Dangerously, the exit of the West from Asia, the knowledge that especially Southeast Asia would always have an unknowable quality that Westerners could never understand. Ever. Hamilton depicts that perfectly. His still lingering schoolboy character is built on the echoes of empire and Kipling. His desire to escape the humdrum existence of suburban Australia reflected in his reading of W. Somerset Maugham. And his thirst for adventure and danger in the novels of Ian Fleming's James Bond. These are the books that dominate his bookshelves. And probably the James Bond movies should be included, too. After all, when Hamilton is menacingly held underwater at a mountain top resort pool by a Russian agent, Vera, it is awfully reminiscent of Bambi and Thumper's attack on Sean Connery in Diamonds Are Forever, which, by the way, just happened to be directed by Guy Hamilton.

At book's end, Koch's Guy Hamilton is ejected from Asia altogether. Left physically scared, he holds Asia as his true "home." But it can't be. As is also made clear towards the end, Hamilton belongs to a tradition rooted in the Aegean and flourishing in even further northern climes. Yes, there is clearly something of the dark and light of the Indonesian shadow puppet show in the clash between the two cultures. A hope for a merging of the Christian and the socialist, the Hindu and the Muslim, and perhaps East with West, as Hamilton's own puppet master, the dwarf, Billy Kwan, held out for. But that is a hope. I think it was Koch's hope. I am not sure, however, that his character, Hamilton, could ever really achieve that home any more than the rest of us Westerners living in Southeast Asia. ( )

Perhaps the best-known novel about Indonesia is “The Year of Living Dangerously” (1978), Christopher Koch’s story about a group of journalists in highly unstable Indonesia in 1965. Mr Koch has since been criticized from various sides, but his book remains equally chilling and entertaining at the same time. ( )

The heat, the sweltering thick of things puts you there. So intimately there. Such a volitile, scary time/place in history. ( )

The Year of Living Dangerousl does a wonderful job of capturing the heat, the desperation, and the danger. As the country spirals out of control, so does the life of Billy Kwan. As I started reading, I was concerned that the book would not be able to keep pace with the movie, which in my mind was extremely well acted and directed - yet, it did. This was a surprisingly excellent book - one that propelled me forward with no desire to set it down. Well done. ( )