Year Of Living Dangerously - Tapa blanda

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 in 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.

Jakarta: 1965. Smelling of petrol, frangipani, kretek cigarettes, hatred and fear, the city waits as racial tension mounts. It is The Year of Living Dangerously.

As each day passes, East and West alike wait for the explosions to begin in Jakarta - and for the bloody, abortive revolution that will leave half a million dead. For a group of ambitious Western journalists, this imminent internal apocalypse is their drug. Hooked on snatching the next story, the sufferings of the Indonesian people scarcely seem real.

But slowly all become subject to Jakarta's insane uncertainties. And as the desperation of a society in torment comes to inform their own increasingly erratic actions, the simmering violence at the edge of their world becomes unbearably real...

'A strong sense of timeless Javanese atmosphere' Guardian

'Koch writes brilliantly' Far Eastern Economic Review

'Intelligent, compassionate, flavoursome, convincing ... this book is to be prized' Anthony Burgess