The Year of Living Dangerously (novel)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- 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.
[edit] 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 journalists from Canada, the UK, the US and New Zealand, 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, had 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 conservative Muslim military. However, Billy Kwan takes a liking to Guy and gets him interviews.
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 and, after initially resisting Guy because she's returning to the UK, Jill falls in love with an equally smitten Guy. This scandalous news is subsequently all over the foreigners' community.
Jill discovers that the Communist Chinese are arming the PKI and passes this information to Guy to save his life, but Guy wants to cover the Communist rebellion that will occur when the arms shipment reaches Jakarta. Billy and Jill are shocked by this and withdraw their friendship, leaving Guy with the American journalist Pete Curtis, and Guy's assistant, who is secretly PKI.
Guy is quietly shanghaied by his assistant and driver to keep him from harm and protect the information. Upon returning to Jakarta, Guy plumbs the depths with Curtis but then realizes his folly.
Billy, outraged by Sukarno's failure to meet the needs of most Indonesians including a woman he's helped who has lost her child, decides to hang an illegal sign from the Western hotel but is thrown from the window by security men, and dies in Guy's arms. His death is also witnessed by Jill.
Guy, who is still in search of "the big story" then visits the Presidential palace in search of a story after the Muslim generals, who have learned of the Communist shipment, have taken over and unleashed the bloodbath on liberals and left-wingers that actually occurred in 1965 with US and Australian complicity.[citation needed] Guy is viciously struck down by an Army officer, detaching his retina.
Resting alone in Billy's bungalow, Guy recalls a passage from the Bhagavad Gita ("all is clouded by desire") that Billy told him. Kumar visits him and brings him up to date on the coup attempt. Risking permanent damage to his eye, he implores Kumar to drive him to the airport, and Guy boards the last plane out of Jakarta and is reunited with Jill.
