Christopher Koch

Young Hugh Dixon believes he can save his father from ruin if he asks his estranged great-uncle Walter a wealthy lawyer who lives alone in a Tasmanian farmhouse passed down through the family-for help. As he is drawn into Walter′s rarefied world, Hugh discovers that both his uncle and the farmhouse are links to a notorious episode in the mid nineteenth century. Walter's father, Martin, was living in the house when it was raided by members of an outlaw community run by Lucas Wilson, a charismatic ex-soldier attempting to build a utopia. But like later societies with communitarian ideals, Nowhere Valley was controlled by the gun, with Wilson as benevolent dictator. Twenty-year-old Martin's sojourn in the Valley as Wilson's disciple has become an obsession with Walter Dixon: one which haunts his present and keeps the past tantalizingly close.

Lost Voices

Jakarta, 1965. Waiting for explosions, the city smells of frangipani, kretek cigarettes, and fear. It is THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY. 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. 'A profound and beautiful book' - Les Murray, The Sydney Morning Herald 'A richly and fully realised work of fiction, well conceived and beautifully executed.' - Larry McMurtry 'Intelligent, compassionate, flavoursome, convincing ...In Billy Kwan, Mr Koch has created one of the most memorable characters of recent fiction.This book is to be prized.' - The Times Literary Supplement

The Year of Living Dangerously

John Cox

Rob Inglis

A Radiovision Feature for Social Studies in the Upper Primary School

New Guinea, the Changing Place

Francis Cullen, growing up in the island of tasmania, is outwardly a very ordinary boy. But his inner life is dominated by dreams of a place he calls the Otherland: a transfigured world beyond the real one. In childhood, he glimpses it in the landscapes of his native island; and when he falls in love with a country girl, the dream is central to his feelings for her.After Heather is lost to him, Francis comes more and more under the influence of Lewie Matthews - a youth whose ambition is to become a criminal. Now the Otherland's location is seen as the mainland of Australia, where a mythical life of wildness and crime beckons. Francis, Lewie and their friends pursue this life in Melbourne - until a climax of destruction shatters the dream.Christopher Koch's first novel moves always on the level of poetry, resembling in its themes Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality. It records those visions seen in childhood which in adulthood are lost for ever.'Holds our sympathies and intrigues, too, by the glimpse of what Australia means to its younger generation.' the times Literary Supplement'Memorably vivid and moving ... the author has the rare capacity for total recall of childhood imaginings, with all their scope and poignancy.' the Age 'His style has a compelling urge.' the Scotsman'the boy's ... fresh openness to experience as he restlessly pursues his dream ... is memorable.' Oxford Companion to Australian Literature

The Boys in the Island

'How do we pierce the skin? Did they teach you that at University?' Clive Broderick, guitar-teacher and occultist - the Doubleman of the title of this acclaimed novel - is speaking of power, and of a realm beyond reality. this is a fable of the sixties, when shared belief-systems crumbled, and the spiritual bazaars of today opened up. Christopher Koch's theme is illusion; and all his characters are bound by it. the Rymers are an electric folk group enjoying mounting success in Sydney. their producer, Richard Miller, came under Broderick's spell during his youth in tasmania; so did the guitarists Brady and Burr. Now, years after his death, Broderick's presence remains with all three. through his disciple, Burr, it will lead to nightmare. tHE DOUBLEMAN was winner of the 1985 Miles Franklin Award. 'Why have I not heard of Koch before, I wonder? He has an extraordinary power of evoking place, and I feel now that tasmania is part of my memory.' - Graham Greene 'As universal in its impact as the myth and music of Orpheus ... a tour-de-force' - David Rowbotham, Brisbane Courier Mail 'A classy writer, deploying a kind of dangerous power with a delicate perception' - Norman Shrapnel, Guardian

The Doubleman

A fascinating insight into a major Australian novelist's development, this collection of pieces employs the memoir as springboard, presenting us with reflections on literature and an analysis of Australia's changing place in the world over the author's lifetime - a lifetime stretching from the British Empire of his childhood to the post-colonial present. 'Crossing the Gap', the title piece of the collection, has a particular topical interest, dealing as it does with the shift from Empire to a new Asia-Pacific consciousness. 'His essays offer striking expositions of the emotions and ideas which have fuelled his fiction.' the times Literary Supplement 'Reading the ruminations of Christopher Koch ... is a bit like going for a walk in the country at night beneath a full moon. You are absorbed into the atmosphere and afterwards find no clear recollection of the earth having passed beneath your feet.' the Age 'No novelist has done more to capture Asia for the Australian imagination than Koch.' Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor, the Australian

Christopher Koch

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