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conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled The Year of Living Dangerously about Australian, Hobart, Tasmania with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction.
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conversations.value: the author (19322013) was an acclaimed Australian novelist from Hobart, Tasmania. He is best known for The Year of Living Dangerously ,which was made into an award-winning film. He was twice awarded the Miles Franklin Award, Australia's top literary honor, for The Doubleman in 1985 and for Highways to a War in 1993.
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conversations.value: Give me a plot for a book about Australian, Hobart, Tasmania with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Year of Living Dangerously (novel): The novel is narrated by "Cookie", a news agency reporter.\nCookie is an older man who acted as a father confessor to many of the characters in the novel, and is telling the story several years after it happened.\nHe is a stand-in for author Christopher Koch, and helps to illuminate the ways in which identity is mediated by other people\'s perceptions of an individual and by that individual\'s perception of him or her self.\nThematically, the novel explores the ways in which Australians began to conceptualize themselves differently from Europeans in the post-World War II era, and the way Eastern religions such as Shintoism and Buddhism offer new ways to approach old problems.\nBilly the dwarf\'s telling of the Indonesian wayang shadow puppet play of the Buddhist legend of Prince Arjun and Princess Skrikandi illustrates the Hindu belief that there is no right or wrong and there are no final answers—one of the ideas raised by Eastern religions.\nThe novel opens as Guy Hamilton, a neophyte foreign correspondent for an Australian radio network, arrives in Jakarta on assignment.\nHe meets several members of the close-knit community of British and Australians in the city, which includes journalists and diplomatic personnel.\nAmong them is Billy Kwan, a Chinese-Australian dwarf of high intelligence and moral seriousness who is a photojournalist.\nGuy\'s predecessor departed Indonesia before Guy arrived, and did not introduce Guy to any of his news contacts.\nGuy receives only limited support from the other foreign journalists in Jakarta, who compete for information from the Sukarno government, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), and the Indonesian National Armed Forces.\nBelieving Guy to be a moral person, Billy (who is exceptionally well-connected) helps him obtain interviews.\nGuy\'s reputation as a journalist soars.\nBilly keeps photographs and notes about the people he knows, recording his observations of their character and their lives and making up stories about their possible motivations.\nGuy is alarmed to discover that Billy is keeping a file on him, too, but decides to trust Billy anyway.\nBilly introduces Guy to Jill Bryant, a beautiful young diplomat at the British embassy.\nBilly and Jill are close friends, and Billy subtly manipulates events so that Guy and Jill continue to encounter one another.\nGuy quickly falls in love with Jill.\nJill is reluctant to begin a relationship with Guy because she is scheduled to return to the United Kingdom soon.\nBut she relents, falls in love, and sleeps with Guy.\nGuy also learns that Billy is a strong supporter of the Sukarno regime, is very concerned with the extreme poverty afflicting Indonesia, and is supporting a local woman and her child with food and money.\nJill\'s diplomatic work is a cover for her real job as an intelligence officer at the British embassy.\nShe discovers that the People\'s Republic of China is secretly sending a shipments of weapons to Indonesia to arm the PKI.\nBelieving that a revolution is about to occur, Jill tells Guy about the arms shipment in the hope that he leaves the country before war breaks out.\nBut Guy, now focused almost completely on his career, decides to verify the story and scoop the other journalists.\nHurt that Guy put his career before their relationship, Jill breaks up with him.\nBilly also ends his friendship with Guy after concluding that Guy has lost his moral compass.\nGuy visits central Java to cover protests there against the Sukarno regime.\nHis car is surrounded by a hostile crowd of PKI sympathizers.\nAlthough he escapes without harm, he realizes his life might be endangered if civil war breaks out.\nReturning to Jakarta and but lacking the access that Billy once gave him, Guy decides to partner with fellow journalist Pete Curtis.\nGuy quickly realizes that Pete is only interested in drinking, parties, and prostitutes.\nAlthough Guy participates in this lifestyle for a short time, Guy is upset when Pete immorally uses the poorest of Indonesian women as prostitutes.\nGuy ends his relationship with Pete.\nGuy turns to his Indonesian driver Kumar (who is secretly a PKI member) for news tips.\nKumar takes Guy to an abandoned Dutch plantation house in the hills above Jakarta, where they spend the weekend drinking and relaxing.\nKumar admits he is a PKI member, but refuses to give up his beliefs despite Guy\'s warnings.\nKumar also warns Guy to leave Indonesia as well, but Guy declines.\nIn a parallel story line, Billy discovers that one of the foreign journalists in Jakarta has been taking advantage of poor Indonesian men by paying them to have sex with him.\nAt a party for Pete (who has been promoted to a posting in Saigon), Billy outs this journalist.\nAs a result, Billy is ostracized by the foreign journalist community.\nIncreasingly sensitive to the poverty of the average Indonesian, Billy is outraged when the child he has been supporting dies of malnutrition and disease.\nDeciding that Sukarno has betrayed the revolution which put him in power, Billy decides to hang an anti-Sukarno banner from the window of a room at the luxurious Hotel Indonesia.\nIt is this hotel at which most foreigners lodge, hold parties, and dine.\nBilly unveils the banner just as President Sukarno is about to visit the hotel.\nBut security personnel break into the hotel room and shoot Billy.\nBilly is then pushed from the window and falls several stories to the road below.\nGuy and Jill witness Billy\'s plunge, and Guy discovers that the "suicide" was a ruse to cover up Billy\'s murder.\nCookie later travels to Billy\'s bungalow and removes the voluminous files he collected on various people.\nThe PKI attempts a coup d\'etat on 30 September 1965.\nGuy and Kumar drive to the Presidential Palace, where Guy attempts to gain entry by boldly walking past the guards.\nAn Army officer strikes Guy in the face with his rifle butt.\nBadly injured, Guy returns to his car and Kumar takes Guy to an empty apartment rented by the British Embassy.\nA physician tells Guy that he has a detached retina, and must lie still for a month or risk losing sight in his eye.\nGuy tries again to convince Kumar to leave the party, but Kumar says he is fighting for a better Indonesia.\nThe novel ends as Sukarno suppresses the coup.\nGuy and Kumar learn from radio broadcasts that hundreds of PKI supporters are being executed.\nGuy decides to flee Indonesia, realizing that his love for Jill is more important than his career.\nHe convinces Kumar to drive him to the airport.\nGuy\'s status as an Australian citizen allows the two men to reach the boarding area.\nKumar must stay behind, but hopes to get a flight out of the country.\nGuy boards an airplane full of British and Australian citizens.\nHe discovers that Jill, who is pregnant with his child, is also aboard.\nThe two fly to safety in Europe.