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Beware of the Past #1
Highways to a War: A Novel
The story of a war photographer who vanishes in the Cambodian jungles and the many lives that he touches--narrated by a childhood friend--captures the deep friendships forged amid the turbulence of the Vietnam War. By the author of The Year of Living Dangerously. 35,000 first printing.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
16 people are currently reading
693 people want to read
About the author
Christopher J. Koch
15 books52 followersChristopher Koch was born and educated in Tasmania. For a good deal of his life he was a broadcasting producer, working for the ABC in Sydney. He has lived and worked in London and elsewhere overseas. He has been a fulltime writer since 1972, winning international praise and a number of awards for his novels, many of which are translated in a number of European countries. One of his novels, The YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY, was made into a film by Peter Weir and was nominated for an Academy Award. He has twice won the Miles Franklin award for fiction: for THE DOUBLEMAN and HIGHWAYS TO A WAR. In 1995 Koch was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his contribution to Australian literature.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
February 27, 2023
Well to use the best literary criticism adjectives - this was ‘a stonking cracker of a read.’😁Having had a holiday a few years back through Vietnam and Cambodia this brought back memories.
The book has great characters with rich dialogue. It reminded me of Karl Marlantes ‘Matterhorn and Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness.’ Essentially, the story of a friend - Ray - trying to find out what happened to a Tasmanian war cameraman Mike Langford. Presumed captured and killed by the Khmer Rouge after the fall of Cambodia.
The story is based on reminiscences from Langford’s colleagues - other war correspondents. As well as the transcripts from a number of Langfords audio recordings. The South Vietnamese army are painted in a good light. The North Vietnamese also, in the character of Captain Danh.
Moving description of three of the characters captured by the North Vietnamese and marching through the jungles with a breather in an underground tunnel. As well as experiencing a number of visceral B52 strikes.
The author wrote ‘A year of living dangerously’ which I will now need to add to my list.
The book has great characters with rich dialogue. It reminded me of Karl Marlantes ‘Matterhorn and Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness.’ Essentially, the story of a friend - Ray - trying to find out what happened to a Tasmanian war cameraman Mike Langford. Presumed captured and killed by the Khmer Rouge after the fall of Cambodia.
The story is based on reminiscences from Langford’s colleagues - other war correspondents. As well as the transcripts from a number of Langfords audio recordings. The South Vietnamese army are painted in a good light. The North Vietnamese also, in the character of Captain Danh.
Moving description of three of the characters captured by the North Vietnamese and marching through the jungles with a breather in an underground tunnel. As well as experiencing a number of visceral B52 strikes.
The author wrote ‘A year of living dangerously’ which I will now need to add to my list.
December 20, 2012
With the last leg of our travels taking us through the Indonchinese countries, I spied this book in Kuta and snatched it off the shelf. The story as summarised on the back of the cover told of Mike Langford a photo journalist who became lost in 1970s Khmer Rouge occupied Cambodia, probably dead, and it was left to his friend Ray to find out and if appropriate execute Mike's will and distribute his belongings. In the course of searching for Mike the reader finds thought Mike's own audio diaries and memos from friends, his whole story which takes him from an unfullfilled farm boy in Tasmania, Australia to a successful cameraman.
Highways to War, is so named as just prior to the fall of Phnom Penh, the civil war was so close and surrounded the city, journalists could take a taxi on any highway out of the city, take a look at the fighting and come back to The Royal Hotel to type it up. Mike's character (he is based on a couple of real photographers) is hard to fathom. He is a man of few words, but huge empathy. This is his undoing as going into the Indochinese wars, if only armed with a camera, empathy is only going to hold you back. He is also a determined character. With little savings he makes his way to Singapore and lives in self-imposed poverty waiting for a job and in the process almost dying of starvation. The luck he has is he finds friends with consulates and being strategically placed in Asia as the cold war became actual bullets. In the end dropping the neutrality of a camera and picking up a gun.
The story from the angle of Australians, gives a new insight into the war in Vietnam and Cambodia. This is not to bash the Americans (that has been done to death), but to bust the myth that the South Vietnamese Army were lazy and corrupt. Mike grew to love the actual people. While there was corruption in the SVA command, the troops were not and had it much worse than Americans. They fought not for ideology (the average SVA wouldn't know what communism/capitalism was), just for love of country. Mike became known as 'Lucky' for taking chances others wouldn't, but also for placing himself with the SVA for long walking tours, living and eating with the troops. Most journalists stayed safe with the Yanks, knowing they could report a quick battle but be back for gin a the hotel in Saigon that evening.
Mike and his close colleagues, who also tell their stories, find themselves placed at almost all the major parts of the Indochinese Wars. They walk the Ho Chi Ming Trail, find themselves in the underground tunnels of the Viet Cong. The author has to make a choice with history at the end and places the reporters at the fall of Saigon, at the expense of a the Khmer Rouge's mass clearance of Phnom Pehn. I would have preferred the other, but that would have meant a lot of conjecture as little was known in the west as to that event, Cambodia locked out the world. The other characters provide conversations and therefore debate on the morality of the struggles. The Count is a French citizen of Russian birth who's parents fled the Russian
Revolution, he argues eloquently against the tyranny of communism. Ian a Welsh BBC reporter uses his working class roots to argue that Vietnam is a war of liberation from feudal tyranny.
In both situations, Vietnam and Cambodia, you see the extremes of what communism threw out at the end of the Indochinese Wars. The North Vietnamese, being the victors, established themselves as working socialism which won not only the war but also a moral victory over the USA. Cambodia, however threw up the Khmer Rouge, a communist collective regime which commited some of the worlds worst autrocities.
Its hard to pull back and realise that the book is actually a fiction, but telling a story is sometimes the best way to understand the bigger picture. At the end it has no real message. No jury decision who was right and wrong in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the 60s and 70s. The only message that hit home, was the one contribution Mike Langford made to a heated debate with The Count and an SVA officer on ideology. Asked for his opinion, he just stated the people should "just take care of each other".
Highways to War, is so named as just prior to the fall of Phnom Penh, the civil war was so close and surrounded the city, journalists could take a taxi on any highway out of the city, take a look at the fighting and come back to The Royal Hotel to type it up. Mike's character (he is based on a couple of real photographers) is hard to fathom. He is a man of few words, but huge empathy. This is his undoing as going into the Indochinese wars, if only armed with a camera, empathy is only going to hold you back. He is also a determined character. With little savings he makes his way to Singapore and lives in self-imposed poverty waiting for a job and in the process almost dying of starvation. The luck he has is he finds friends with consulates and being strategically placed in Asia as the cold war became actual bullets. In the end dropping the neutrality of a camera and picking up a gun.
The story from the angle of Australians, gives a new insight into the war in Vietnam and Cambodia. This is not to bash the Americans (that has been done to death), but to bust the myth that the South Vietnamese Army were lazy and corrupt. Mike grew to love the actual people. While there was corruption in the SVA command, the troops were not and had it much worse than Americans. They fought not for ideology (the average SVA wouldn't know what communism/capitalism was), just for love of country. Mike became known as 'Lucky' for taking chances others wouldn't, but also for placing himself with the SVA for long walking tours, living and eating with the troops. Most journalists stayed safe with the Yanks, knowing they could report a quick battle but be back for gin a the hotel in Saigon that evening.
Mike and his close colleagues, who also tell their stories, find themselves placed at almost all the major parts of the Indochinese Wars. They walk the Ho Chi Ming Trail, find themselves in the underground tunnels of the Viet Cong. The author has to make a choice with history at the end and places the reporters at the fall of Saigon, at the expense of a the Khmer Rouge's mass clearance of Phnom Pehn. I would have preferred the other, but that would have meant a lot of conjecture as little was known in the west as to that event, Cambodia locked out the world. The other characters provide conversations and therefore debate on the morality of the struggles. The Count is a French citizen of Russian birth who's parents fled the Russian
Revolution, he argues eloquently against the tyranny of communism. Ian a Welsh BBC reporter uses his working class roots to argue that Vietnam is a war of liberation from feudal tyranny.
In both situations, Vietnam and Cambodia, you see the extremes of what communism threw out at the end of the Indochinese Wars. The North Vietnamese, being the victors, established themselves as working socialism which won not only the war but also a moral victory over the USA. Cambodia, however threw up the Khmer Rouge, a communist collective regime which commited some of the worlds worst autrocities.
Its hard to pull back and realise that the book is actually a fiction, but telling a story is sometimes the best way to understand the bigger picture. At the end it has no real message. No jury decision who was right and wrong in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the 60s and 70s. The only message that hit home, was the one contribution Mike Langford made to a heated debate with The Count and an SVA officer on ideology. Asked for his opinion, he just stated the people should "just take care of each other".
May 4, 2008
A book that leaves me shaking and crying is rare.
April 11, 2019
Update 11 April 2019: reread this novel for the second time in less than a year. It still stands apart, a strong rendering of a very personalized look at the wars in Southeast Asia during the Sixties and Seventies.
------------------
Imaginative, this book about a quest to discover the fate of Mike Langford, an Australian journalist who has disappeared into Cambodia after the fall of the country to the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Told through multiple points of view, Highways to a War operates a bit like a literary version of Citizen Kane. Beginning with Langford's childhood friend, Ray Barton, who has been tasked with tracking down Langford's whereabouts, you discover the boy behind the man in the harsh farmlands of Tasmania. The loss of a family and an early love serve as Langford's "Rosebud," the tangible childhood memory that gave insight into Charles Foster Kane's obsession to control people and possess things.
Yet Langford is someone who possesses virtually nothing materialistically and who devotes himself to idealistic causes often dismissed by other Western journalists and officials, from the down and out Singaporeans living and working on the city's wharves to the dismissed and unseen soldiers of the South Vietnamese army. Later, he takes up the cause of the Free Cambodian remnants who once backed Lon Nol but who become exiled to the fringes of the Thai-Cambodian border after the Khmer Rouge take over the country and institute a reign of terror. All the while, he has fallen for the seductions of a Vietnamese "dragon lady" at one point and a revenge minded Cambodian patriot who has lost her father to the Khmer Rouge a little while later.
The book is masterful at weaving the wars in Indochina into its landscape. And it has an epic feel to it, going from Tasmania to Singapore in the early 1960s, then to Saigon in 1965, Bangkok in 1976, and then back to Phnom Penh in 1973. But the reader will need to be somewhat familiar with the details and history of that time, for some of it is taken for granted--even though the novel was published in 1995. And this may be why the book has remained relatively obscure, unlike Koch's best known work, The Year of Living Dangrously, which also dealt with roughly the same time period in a more focused manner. Highways to a War was written for the generation that lived and knew the Vietnam War and the Cambodian genocide. Being a work of the mid 1990s, its readership was being replaced by a younger generation or a society that had turned its back on the turmoil of Southeast Asia in the 1960s-1970s and focused on the good times of the 1990s. Koch's novel was caught between then and right before the beginning of the terror wars of the twenty-first century.
It's a pity. Because this novel is superior in almost every way to other works on the wars in Southeast Asia. Its formal exploration of Langford from the differing perspectives of his closest friends, however, never leaves us with a full picture of the man. We see him from the view of his childhood best friend, his two fellow cameramen, and a close reporter friend. We even see him from his own confidences recorded into a tape recorder instead of a written diary. But there is still a mystery to him at the end. Why? Maybe because we never actually encounter Langford directly. And maybe because despite all the revelations about him, his ultimate motivations remain repressed in his own thoughts and memories. Much like Charles Foster Kane.
*Based upon the life of Australian cameraman and war correspondent Neil Davis, who was killed during a Bangkok coup attempt in 1985.
------------------
Imaginative, this book about a quest to discover the fate of Mike Langford, an Australian journalist who has disappeared into Cambodia after the fall of the country to the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Told through multiple points of view, Highways to a War operates a bit like a literary version of Citizen Kane. Beginning with Langford's childhood friend, Ray Barton, who has been tasked with tracking down Langford's whereabouts, you discover the boy behind the man in the harsh farmlands of Tasmania. The loss of a family and an early love serve as Langford's "Rosebud," the tangible childhood memory that gave insight into Charles Foster Kane's obsession to control people and possess things.
Yet Langford is someone who possesses virtually nothing materialistically and who devotes himself to idealistic causes often dismissed by other Western journalists and officials, from the down and out Singaporeans living and working on the city's wharves to the dismissed and unseen soldiers of the South Vietnamese army. Later, he takes up the cause of the Free Cambodian remnants who once backed Lon Nol but who become exiled to the fringes of the Thai-Cambodian border after the Khmer Rouge take over the country and institute a reign of terror. All the while, he has fallen for the seductions of a Vietnamese "dragon lady" at one point and a revenge minded Cambodian patriot who has lost her father to the Khmer Rouge a little while later.
The book is masterful at weaving the wars in Indochina into its landscape. And it has an epic feel to it, going from Tasmania to Singapore in the early 1960s, then to Saigon in 1965, Bangkok in 1976, and then back to Phnom Penh in 1973. But the reader will need to be somewhat familiar with the details and history of that time, for some of it is taken for granted--even though the novel was published in 1995. And this may be why the book has remained relatively obscure, unlike Koch's best known work, The Year of Living Dangrously, which also dealt with roughly the same time period in a more focused manner. Highways to a War was written for the generation that lived and knew the Vietnam War and the Cambodian genocide. Being a work of the mid 1990s, its readership was being replaced by a younger generation or a society that had turned its back on the turmoil of Southeast Asia in the 1960s-1970s and focused on the good times of the 1990s. Koch's novel was caught between then and right before the beginning of the terror wars of the twenty-first century.
It's a pity. Because this novel is superior in almost every way to other works on the wars in Southeast Asia. Its formal exploration of Langford from the differing perspectives of his closest friends, however, never leaves us with a full picture of the man. We see him from the view of his childhood best friend, his two fellow cameramen, and a close reporter friend. We even see him from his own confidences recorded into a tape recorder instead of a written diary. But there is still a mystery to him at the end. Why? Maybe because we never actually encounter Langford directly. And maybe because despite all the revelations about him, his ultimate motivations remain repressed in his own thoughts and memories. Much like Charles Foster Kane.
*Based upon the life of Australian cameraman and war correspondent Neil Davis, who was killed during a Bangkok coup attempt in 1985.
September 20, 2007
Extremely well written book that comes closest to evoking the sensuous magic of Southeast Asia as any book I have read in recent months. It also captures the lure of danger and promise of adventure that drew war correspondents to the area throughout the Vietnam War.
The author is Christopher j. Koch, the guy who wrote 'The Year of Living Dangerously," which became a movie with Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver about reporting in Indonesia.
Highways to a War centers on a swashbuckling Australian War Photographer and his journeys through the Vietnam era, which end with his disapearance in Cambodia after the fall of Phnom Penh. It's told in the voice of a an Australian lawyer who attempts to reconstruct the career of the photographer, a childhood friend, and solve the mystery of his fate.
Part thriller, part mystery, part adventure story, part historical fiction, this is a bitchin' read. I definately enjoyed it.
It starts a bit slow, vividly describing a childhood in Tasmania. Cinematic desciption... plodding narrative.
But then it takes off.
The author explores the seduction of danger in combat, and what it was like in Saigon and out in the field during the Vietnam War. Lots of good yarns here. Then he moves on to Cambodia painting an almost idyllic picture of the country as it was sucked into the war, and the sinister Khmer Rouge tightened their grip around the capital.
All the while, Koch populates the book with the kinds of interesting characters you'd only find in a war zone bar, and weaves a narrative that I, as a journalist, found fascinating -- fire fights, captured journalists, forced jungle marches, the Ho Chi Minh trail in all it's glory.
This is a good one.
The author is Christopher j. Koch, the guy who wrote 'The Year of Living Dangerously," which became a movie with Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver about reporting in Indonesia.
Highways to a War centers on a swashbuckling Australian War Photographer and his journeys through the Vietnam era, which end with his disapearance in Cambodia after the fall of Phnom Penh. It's told in the voice of a an Australian lawyer who attempts to reconstruct the career of the photographer, a childhood friend, and solve the mystery of his fate.
Part thriller, part mystery, part adventure story, part historical fiction, this is a bitchin' read. I definately enjoyed it.
It starts a bit slow, vividly describing a childhood in Tasmania. Cinematic desciption... plodding narrative.
But then it takes off.
The author explores the seduction of danger in combat, and what it was like in Saigon and out in the field during the Vietnam War. Lots of good yarns here. Then he moves on to Cambodia painting an almost idyllic picture of the country as it was sucked into the war, and the sinister Khmer Rouge tightened their grip around the capital.
All the while, Koch populates the book with the kinds of interesting characters you'd only find in a war zone bar, and weaves a narrative that I, as a journalist, found fascinating -- fire fights, captured journalists, forced jungle marches, the Ho Chi Minh trail in all it's glory.
This is a good one.
May 12, 2025
A very interesting historical fiction novel mainly about Mike Langford, a war photographer and journalist who in April 1976 disappears inside Cambodia. It is thought that he has been executed by the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge had taken control of Cambodia twelve months ago, around the time of the Americans complete withdrawal from South Vietnam.
Mike Langford, a Tasmanian, is a risk taker, a survivor, who captures many still life photos where soldiers are fighting. He displays bravery on many occasions and helps with saving the lives of soldiers injured at the war front. He is an idealist but after ten years in the South East Asia war zone, he begins to lose his objectivity and becomes involved with the Free Khmer. Langford is enticed back into Cambodia to find a Cambodian woman that he has fallen in love with.
The story is narrated by Ray, Langford’s oldest friend, who goes about piecing together Langford’s life story whilst trying to establish whether Langford is alive in Cambodia. Ray receives a collection of tapes that Langford recorded over the years, an ‘audio diary’.
I particularly enjoyed the part where Mike Langford, Jim Feng and Dimitri Volkov are captured by the North Vietnamese and their lives are at risk as the three are thought to be American spies. This part of the story is told from journalist, Jim Feng’s perspective.
A memorable story of lives lived close to the war front.
This book was the winner of the 1996 Miles Franklin Award.
Mike Langford, a Tasmanian, is a risk taker, a survivor, who captures many still life photos where soldiers are fighting. He displays bravery on many occasions and helps with saving the lives of soldiers injured at the war front. He is an idealist but after ten years in the South East Asia war zone, he begins to lose his objectivity and becomes involved with the Free Khmer. Langford is enticed back into Cambodia to find a Cambodian woman that he has fallen in love with.
The story is narrated by Ray, Langford’s oldest friend, who goes about piecing together Langford’s life story whilst trying to establish whether Langford is alive in Cambodia. Ray receives a collection of tapes that Langford recorded over the years, an ‘audio diary’.
I particularly enjoyed the part where Mike Langford, Jim Feng and Dimitri Volkov are captured by the North Vietnamese and their lives are at risk as the three are thought to be American spies. This part of the story is told from journalist, Jim Feng’s perspective.
A memorable story of lives lived close to the war front.
This book was the winner of the 1996 Miles Franklin Award.
October 22, 2025
This and the quiet American should fight, I agree
April 29, 2014
This is the third of (the late) Christopher Koch's novels I've now read, and he is fast becoming one of my favourite authors. 'Highways to a War' covers similar ground to 'The Year of Living Dangerously', both being fictional examinations of recent political situations in South East Asia, seen through the eyes of foreign correspondents and photographers, but for me this was even better than the earlier book. A superb examination of what leads a person or a country to war, of what makes someone willing to risk their life for a cause, and the very human need to freeze and capture moments of time. Mike Langford, the Tasmanian war photographer who at the start of the novel has gone missing in Khmer Rouge Cambodia, is a fascinating and complex character: seemingly a gilded knight-like figure who acquires the status of legend amongst his peers, he is also somewhat haunted, endlessly seeking to belong. The Vietnam and Cambodia of the 1960s and 70s is vividly realised and Koch's presentation of the political situation is as balanced as that presented by his 'impartial' journalist characters. A masterful novel.
August 31, 2017
3 1/2 stars.. Too much detail of the battles fought, for my taste, even though they are well written and YES it is a war novel. However, such realism, rhythm and well-paced writing, it was really enjoyable.
October 29, 2023
"Most love is a dream we wake up from"
With this book I experienced that wonderful rare feeling of being suddenly and fully engaged by the story -- after the long and very dry intro of a boy's life in Tasmania, which was less than engaging, the story really takes off when the narrator goes to Singapore. The story comes alive and, after the difficult beginning, i entered the story and didn't want to leave from thereon in. It's that feeling of being the reader outside of story, detached, and then you're inside and enveloped and that's magic that is like nothing else, when your mind blossoms after being seeded by a stranger.
Now, it has to be said that the slow introduction is there to give some sort of character development to both the narrator and even to the object of his search, the main character. He is the cynosure of the story but always remains an enigma, an apollo who is something of a superhero, they even openly describe him as something more than human, and I have to say that didn't make him very accessible or even particularly sympathetic to me. To a lesser degree, his love interest is not even that compelling, as she is not fully sketched. However, and despite this, that didn't even matter that much because the other characters and the story and the descriptions of life in South East Asia and of war are so good that the end result is an immersive experience that I couldn't put down. Which is quite something.
"Passions fermented in Europe more than a century ago created such a long agony there: passions of the mind
That's such a great description of the irony that both colonialism and the national idealistic movements that fought it were European diseases ... the KR in particular
And this poem, what to make of it:
A little fishpond, just over two feet square,
and not terribly deep.
A pair of goldfish swim in it
as freely as in a lake.
Like bones of mountains among icy autumn clouds
tiny stalagmites pierce the rippling surface.
For the fish, it's a question of being alive --
They don't worry about the depth of the water.
And here, with the revelation of the end, when with the relevator's sharing of the brutal truth:
"His tone attempts irony, but emerges instead with a fleeting note of regret: even of sentimentality. The emotionally cold live in a sort of vacuum, I imagine, noses pressed to the window of life; sentimentality must be the closest they get to the warmth that's denied them."
Ultimately this is the power of the book , that human connection is more important than the individual or communal will to power
Excellent read , highly recommended, similar to Robert Stone's best, more earnest and perhaps the better for it
With this book I experienced that wonderful rare feeling of being suddenly and fully engaged by the story -- after the long and very dry intro of a boy's life in Tasmania, which was less than engaging, the story really takes off when the narrator goes to Singapore. The story comes alive and, after the difficult beginning, i entered the story and didn't want to leave from thereon in. It's that feeling of being the reader outside of story, detached, and then you're inside and enveloped and that's magic that is like nothing else, when your mind blossoms after being seeded by a stranger.
Now, it has to be said that the slow introduction is there to give some sort of character development to both the narrator and even to the object of his search, the main character. He is the cynosure of the story but always remains an enigma, an apollo who is something of a superhero, they even openly describe him as something more than human, and I have to say that didn't make him very accessible or even particularly sympathetic to me. To a lesser degree, his love interest is not even that compelling, as she is not fully sketched. However, and despite this, that didn't even matter that much because the other characters and the story and the descriptions of life in South East Asia and of war are so good that the end result is an immersive experience that I couldn't put down. Which is quite something.
"Passions fermented in Europe more than a century ago created such a long agony there: passions of the mind
That's such a great description of the irony that both colonialism and the national idealistic movements that fought it were European diseases ... the KR in particular
And this poem, what to make of it:
A little fishpond, just over two feet square,
and not terribly deep.
A pair of goldfish swim in it
as freely as in a lake.
Like bones of mountains among icy autumn clouds
tiny stalagmites pierce the rippling surface.
For the fish, it's a question of being alive --
They don't worry about the depth of the water.
And here, with the revelation of the end, when with the relevator's sharing of the brutal truth:
"His tone attempts irony, but emerges instead with a fleeting note of regret: even of sentimentality. The emotionally cold live in a sort of vacuum, I imagine, noses pressed to the window of life; sentimentality must be the closest they get to the warmth that's denied them."
Ultimately this is the power of the book , that human connection is more important than the individual or communal will to power
Excellent read , highly recommended, similar to Robert Stone's best, more earnest and perhaps the better for it
October 21, 2021
A slow start, but a MIGHTY & POWERFUL read. Brutal & harrowing in detail. Not ashamed to say I was choked up more than once. Nice to read on the subject without that jargon-heavy, military slant you often seem to get with so many novels on this period. FABULOUS.
July 8, 2022
This is a very good novel. It is told by several friends of one Mike Langford, a war photographer who grew up on a hops farm in Tasmania (!). Langford's fearless actions taking photos of battles in Vietnam and Cambodia bring him respect from other war correspondents and a reputation as the luckiest correspondent in Southeast Asia. His respect for and generosity towards Vietnamese and Cambodian soldiers (specifically, the South Vietnamese and anti-communist Cambodian soldiers) and civilians -- especially children -- show him to be different from most of the foreigners in these countries during their disastrous wars.
The novel begins in 1976, about a year after the Khmer Rouge have conquered Cambodia and turned it into a new form of hell. Langford is reported to have crossed the sealed Cambodian border with word that he would return in five days. The balance of the novel consists of the story of his childhood and activities in Southeast Asia as told by his fellow journalists, and their speculation as to his fate.
In their relations, Langford seems to be a unique and essentially good person, although we should remember that the story is told by his close friends: an Anglo-Chinese photographer from Hong Kong, a Russo-French photographer and descendant of pre-revolutionary nobility, and some Australian, English, and American print journalists.
Koch's characterization of these individuals is excellent, although, of course, Langford's character remains a moving target. The author's detailed descriptions of Singapore, Saigon, and Phnom Penh, as well as the descriptions of war in the countryside, are all fascinating. Koch himself was an Australian journalist in Southeast Asia for many years, and I would guess that he captures what these places felt like to foreigners during the war years.
I read this book because he is also the author of The Year of Living Dangerously (1982 or 1983), a novel about a young Australian journalist in Jakarta, Indonesia, during the last year of Sukarno's rule, up to the September 30/October 1 1965 coup attempt (or whatever it was - the actual events are a mystery to the character, and in real life were largely a mystery to everyone for many years. These events led to the anti-Communist massacres of the next few years that killed, depending 0n whom you ask, 500,000 to 2 million deaths). That is an excellent novel, in my opinion, and it was made into an excellent movie in 1984, starring an absurdly young Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver (they seem absurdly young because that was 38 years ago, and they've each been in 1,000 or more movies since).
The author intended Highways to a War> to be a companion novel to another about one of Langford's ancestors, an Irish person and perhaps Irish rebel transported to Australia in the 19th century. I don't believe that book was ever published.
The novel begins in 1976, about a year after the Khmer Rouge have conquered Cambodia and turned it into a new form of hell. Langford is reported to have crossed the sealed Cambodian border with word that he would return in five days. The balance of the novel consists of the story of his childhood and activities in Southeast Asia as told by his fellow journalists, and their speculation as to his fate.
In their relations, Langford seems to be a unique and essentially good person, although we should remember that the story is told by his close friends: an Anglo-Chinese photographer from Hong Kong, a Russo-French photographer and descendant of pre-revolutionary nobility, and some Australian, English, and American print journalists.
Koch's characterization of these individuals is excellent, although, of course, Langford's character remains a moving target. The author's detailed descriptions of Singapore, Saigon, and Phnom Penh, as well as the descriptions of war in the countryside, are all fascinating. Koch himself was an Australian journalist in Southeast Asia for many years, and I would guess that he captures what these places felt like to foreigners during the war years.
I read this book because he is also the author of The Year of Living Dangerously (1982 or 1983), a novel about a young Australian journalist in Jakarta, Indonesia, during the last year of Sukarno's rule, up to the September 30/October 1 1965 coup attempt (or whatever it was - the actual events are a mystery to the character, and in real life were largely a mystery to everyone for many years. These events led to the anti-Communist massacres of the next few years that killed, depending 0n whom you ask, 500,000 to 2 million deaths). That is an excellent novel, in my opinion, and it was made into an excellent movie in 1984, starring an absurdly young Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver (they seem absurdly young because that was 38 years ago, and they've each been in 1,000 or more movies since).
The author intended Highways to a War> to be a companion novel to another about one of Langford's ancestors, an Irish person and perhaps Irish rebel transported to Australia in the 19th century. I don't believe that book was ever published.
August 21, 2015
This an excellent novel by a venerable Australian author, Christopher Koch, probably best known for his novel set in Jakarta in 1965, The Year of Living Dangerously, filmed by Peter Weir and starring Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver. In Highways to a War, Koch returns to South East Asia, and the great conflagration which engulfed Indochina between 1965-1975. The hero of the story is Mike Langford, a Tasmanian (like the author himself) who travels to South East Asia in 1965 to make his name as a news cameraman. In Singapore, he is assigned to cover the commencement of the American buildup in South Vietnam. Anyone familiar with the non fiction book Despatches by Michael Herr will recognise the mileu of the Saigon press corps to which he becomes attached. Langford is I think loosely based on the legendary Australian war correspondent Damien Parer, but his story and ultimate fate parallels that of Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, who went missing in Cambodia in 1970 and were reportedly executed by the Khmer Rouge in 1971. Apart from some set pieces in Tasmania, Singapore, and South Vietnam which develop character and story, the bulk of the action takes place in Cambodia in 1973. The Khmer Rouge have surrounded Phnom Penh in an ever decreasing circle, and despite concentrated bombing by United States B-52s the prognosis for the situation is grim. I won't give away what happens but suffice to say this is a gripping read in the tradition of Grahame Greene, and is a very welcome addition to the canon of literature regarding the war in Vietnam and it's Cambodian overspill.
August 27, 2012
This is the one of the best novels based on the Vietnam War and the war in Cambodia that I have read. It’s written as an account of the life of a fictional war photojournalist, Mike Langford, an Aussie hops (yes, the grain used to brew beer) farm boy, who disappears inside Cambodia. It provides a fascinating account of political issues, the life of a war correspondence, the hazards of covering military conflicts from the front lines. I especially appreciate the respectful and loving treatment of life in Vietnam and Cambodia and of the heroic qualities and courage of the Vietnamese and Cambodian peoples. By the way, this is written with a politically balanced perspective and, through the dialog of Mike and his friends, covers all perspectives on our Vietnam experience.
October 1, 2016
I found this book exciting and beautiful. The depiction of South East Asia in the 60s and 70s was fascinating. Recent history that you think you are familiar with but still much to learn. Well written characters, lots of tension and evocative descriptions of colonial cities and asian countryside. A war novel but much more than that. If you have ever been to Vietnam or Cambodia or met someone from either country you should read it.
October 10, 2007
This was super depressing from the opening on. I liked the descriptions of wartime in Southeast Asia (super evocative), but even though the main characters were mostly likable and quite righteous, I had trouble keeping many of the secondary characters straight and I just didn't like the way so many of them were introduced but then went away without factoring in to the plot... meh.
September 1, 2012
His descriptions of Tasmania are sublime, his portrait of his main character and the events are riveting. I immediately borrowed the biography of Neil Davies, on whom his main character is based - One Crowded Hour by Tim Bowden which is also amazing.
September 6, 2016
Highways to a War is absolutely incredible. This is now one of my favourite novels. The world is so vivid and feels real. The characters have so much depth. This novel conveys the hopelessness and wonder of war, and it is gripping from beginning to the end.
June 11, 2011
Forgotten I had read this one. Excellent. Mine has a different cover. It was this book that led me to Koch's writing. His epic "Out of Ireland" is terrific = highly recommended.
September 27, 2012
Possibly an ever better book than the more famous 'Year of Living Dangerously'. Criminally underrated.
July 28, 2024
‘In April 1976, my friend Michael Langford disappeared inside Cambodia. Twelve months earlier the Khmer Rouge had taken power, erasing the past and restarting the world from the beginning. We were now at the end of Year Zero.’
While the conflicts in Vietnam and Cambodia form the background to this novel, the slow introduction set in Tasmania caught and captured my attention. I spent all of my childhood in Tasmania, and much of the setting was familiar to me. Which meant that, by the time Michael (Mike)Langford went missing in the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia, I was completely engaged. Any Australian my age or older will remember the Vietnam War and the controversy surrounding conscripted soldiers. We may have had doubts about Australia’s involvement in the war, but no-one could doubt the courage of those involved. In this novel, Ray Barton travelled to Southeast Asia to search for Mike. Mike, a combat photographer, had left instructions for his taped diaries to be given to his childhood friend Ray if he did not return from Cambodia.
Ray attempts to reconstruct Mike’s life using the taped diaries, his own memories and the recollections of several others. Ray is seeking to understand who Mike was, and why he went into Cambodia.
‘I’d been out of Indochina for nearly seven years, Harvey said. When I came back, all highways led to the war.’
As the story shifts between the various people who knew Mike, as they wonder why he traded recording the war for participation in it, I wondered about where Mike saw himself belonging. Mike had a falling out with his father in Tasmania and had had left his childhood family behind. Did his loyalty to those in Vietnam and Cambodia represent a search for belonging? And while I wondered, my reading was arrested by passages such as this:
‘In the time of the monsoon rains, when the Mekong overflows, its tributary the Tonle Sap performs its annual miracle; it turns around to run backwards. Carrying the Mekong’s torrents to the lake from which it takes its name, the river enlarges the lake from a thousand to four thousand square miles. Whole forests are submerged at the country’s heart; fish swim among the trees. Then, at the beginning of the dry season, Tonle Sap river flows back to the Mekong. It siphons off the water from the Great Lake and the drowned heartland; in uncovers the underwater forests, leaving fish trapped there by the thousands; it exposes silt-rich acres for rice planting. The river is the engine of Cambodia’s bounty, deliverer of fish and rice to the people, and every November, back in the happy sixties, surrounded by dragon boats and xylophone music for the river gods, the little Prince would honour Tonle Sap, cutting the magic string that caused it to come back again to the Mekong.
But tonight this seemed a memory of play: a time of Cambodian childishness that would never come again. Reality now was the children catching insects for food, and wartime silence under a high, full moon.’
Mike Langford is missing, and Southeast Asia is changing. By the end of 1975 Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos became communist countries. Is Mike still alive? How could Ray (or anyone else) track Mike? Would Mike want to be found?
This novel drew me in gradually and refused to let me leave. The bravery, the imagery, the doomed fighting and the toll on those who survived left me wondering about choices made and roles assumed. And I remember the three courageous characters: Mike Langford, Ly Keang and Madame Claudine Pham.
‘Highways to a War’ won the 1996 Miles Franklin Award. It is one of a diptych: the other book, ‘Out of Ireland’ is on my bookshelf, patiently waiting to be read.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
While the conflicts in Vietnam and Cambodia form the background to this novel, the slow introduction set in Tasmania caught and captured my attention. I spent all of my childhood in Tasmania, and much of the setting was familiar to me. Which meant that, by the time Michael (Mike)Langford went missing in the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia, I was completely engaged. Any Australian my age or older will remember the Vietnam War and the controversy surrounding conscripted soldiers. We may have had doubts about Australia’s involvement in the war, but no-one could doubt the courage of those involved. In this novel, Ray Barton travelled to Southeast Asia to search for Mike. Mike, a combat photographer, had left instructions for his taped diaries to be given to his childhood friend Ray if he did not return from Cambodia.
Ray attempts to reconstruct Mike’s life using the taped diaries, his own memories and the recollections of several others. Ray is seeking to understand who Mike was, and why he went into Cambodia.
‘I’d been out of Indochina for nearly seven years, Harvey said. When I came back, all highways led to the war.’
As the story shifts between the various people who knew Mike, as they wonder why he traded recording the war for participation in it, I wondered about where Mike saw himself belonging. Mike had a falling out with his father in Tasmania and had had left his childhood family behind. Did his loyalty to those in Vietnam and Cambodia represent a search for belonging? And while I wondered, my reading was arrested by passages such as this:
‘In the time of the monsoon rains, when the Mekong overflows, its tributary the Tonle Sap performs its annual miracle; it turns around to run backwards. Carrying the Mekong’s torrents to the lake from which it takes its name, the river enlarges the lake from a thousand to four thousand square miles. Whole forests are submerged at the country’s heart; fish swim among the trees. Then, at the beginning of the dry season, Tonle Sap river flows back to the Mekong. It siphons off the water from the Great Lake and the drowned heartland; in uncovers the underwater forests, leaving fish trapped there by the thousands; it exposes silt-rich acres for rice planting. The river is the engine of Cambodia’s bounty, deliverer of fish and rice to the people, and every November, back in the happy sixties, surrounded by dragon boats and xylophone music for the river gods, the little Prince would honour Tonle Sap, cutting the magic string that caused it to come back again to the Mekong.
But tonight this seemed a memory of play: a time of Cambodian childishness that would never come again. Reality now was the children catching insects for food, and wartime silence under a high, full moon.’
Mike Langford is missing, and Southeast Asia is changing. By the end of 1975 Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos became communist countries. Is Mike still alive? How could Ray (or anyone else) track Mike? Would Mike want to be found?
This novel drew me in gradually and refused to let me leave. The bravery, the imagery, the doomed fighting and the toll on those who survived left me wondering about choices made and roles assumed. And I remember the three courageous characters: Mike Langford, Ly Keang and Madame Claudine Pham.
‘Highways to a War’ won the 1996 Miles Franklin Award. It is one of a diptych: the other book, ‘Out of Ireland’ is on my bookshelf, patiently waiting to be read.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
June 9, 2018
A very readable historical novel that focuses upon the Vietnam War and, more predominantly, the conflict in Cambodia. It has a cinematic scope, a vivid sense of time & place, and is concerned with the search for a missing Australian photojournalist, Mike Langford.
The seedier back streets of Singapore, Saigon and Phenom Penh are contrasted with the seasonal descriptions of rural Cambodia & Vietnam in the midst of war. As I live in Darwin, the writer perfectly conveys the suffocating humidity, the rancid wet, and the parched dry seasons of the tropics.
Some parts of the novel feel a little dated however...particularly the characters. Through the recollections of peripheral characters, or 'transcripts' from the missing journo himself, the mystery is slowly revealed to the reader. The women are written as mesmerising/ beautiful/untameable cliches of the exotic East, whilst Langford becomes an almost Christ-like figure. I don't know if these characters were embellished as part of a more 'cinematic' approach, or as I suspect, they are meant to be written as 'intangible' objects in the minds of other characters and therefore, idealistic & emblematic. This was part of the main conceit of the novel that didn't quite sit comfortably with me.
My favourite parts of the novel were the evocations of the narrator's childhood in rural Tasmania. Those passages were wonderful and reminded me that I must read more Australian authors.
I will track down another novel by the writer.
The seedier back streets of Singapore, Saigon and Phenom Penh are contrasted with the seasonal descriptions of rural Cambodia & Vietnam in the midst of war. As I live in Darwin, the writer perfectly conveys the suffocating humidity, the rancid wet, and the parched dry seasons of the tropics.
Some parts of the novel feel a little dated however...particularly the characters. Through the recollections of peripheral characters, or 'transcripts' from the missing journo himself, the mystery is slowly revealed to the reader. The women are written as mesmerising/ beautiful/untameable cliches of the exotic East, whilst Langford becomes an almost Christ-like figure. I don't know if these characters were embellished as part of a more 'cinematic' approach, or as I suspect, they are meant to be written as 'intangible' objects in the minds of other characters and therefore, idealistic & emblematic. This was part of the main conceit of the novel that didn't quite sit comfortably with me.
My favourite parts of the novel were the evocations of the narrator's childhood in rural Tasmania. Those passages were wonderful and reminded me that I must read more Australian authors.
I will track down another novel by the writer.
Read
September 4, 2017So it took me over a week to process this book. It's brilliant and yet, while I say that, I can't help cringing at the way it's mired in a lot of sexist tropes. The worst of which is *spoilers* when the main character engages in a romantic relationship with a disabled street kid he can't speak to due to a language barrier, and who may or may not be 18. That was so f****ed up and upsetting to me that I almost put the book down and walked away (and yes the author denounces the relationship through other characters, as well as the way the relationship works out, but that doesn't erase the fact the main character is hailed a hero but is still completely oblivious as to why this girl might have wanted to get away from him), but I'm glad I didn't put it down because it paints an excellent picture of the political situation in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 60's and 70's. I would definitely recommend reading this if you live in the region or if you're interested in that time period in Vietnamese and Cambodian history.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 7, 2021
Good book, if a bit long and at times, disjointed.
The character of Mike Langford appears based on legendary Australian news photographer Neil Davis who made his name in the 60s and 70s in the SE Asian wars. T
Told mainly through the experience of Langford's childhood friend Ray, a Tasmanian lawyer, Koch creates Langford as an almost stereotypical Australian hero. Handsome, unflappable, taciturn, valiant, professional, but humane and dedicated to the plight of the peoples of the Asian war, Cambodia especially.
Koch is expert at evoking an Asia of the past. Also of 'spooks', journos, military and government figures of the time.
My favourite quote, when Ray is talking to the drunken ex-spook Donald Mills in Bangkok:
"His tone attempts irony, but emerges instead with a fleeting note of regret: even of sentimentality. The emotionally cold live in a sort of vacuum, I imagine, noses pressed to the window of life; sentimentality must be the closest they get to the warmth that's denied them."
The character of Mike Langford appears based on legendary Australian news photographer Neil Davis who made his name in the 60s and 70s in the SE Asian wars. T
Told mainly through the experience of Langford's childhood friend Ray, a Tasmanian lawyer, Koch creates Langford as an almost stereotypical Australian hero. Handsome, unflappable, taciturn, valiant, professional, but humane and dedicated to the plight of the peoples of the Asian war, Cambodia especially.
Koch is expert at evoking an Asia of the past. Also of 'spooks', journos, military and government figures of the time.
My favourite quote, when Ray is talking to the drunken ex-spook Donald Mills in Bangkok:
"His tone attempts irony, but emerges instead with a fleeting note of regret: even of sentimentality. The emotionally cold live in a sort of vacuum, I imagine, noses pressed to the window of life; sentimentality must be the closest they get to the warmth that's denied them."
April 2, 2020
When Mike Langford, a war photographer with a reputation for unusual risk-taking, disappears inside Cambodia, he becomes a mythic figure in the minds of his friends. Ray Barton travels to war-ravaged Southeast Asia to search for his missing friend. The search for him, which is at the heart of this novel, explores the personal highways that led him to war, and to his ultimate fate. (Publisher review)
This is a convincing and gripping story of profound relationships forged in a dangerous land, between foreign correspondents covering the Indochina war and with the people whose lives intersect with theirs.
This review by 'The Times' reporter, Erica Wagner, sums it up perfectly: A subtle unfolding of character and history camouflaged in battle-dress; an absorbing portrait of lives lived at the edges of terror and beauty. Koch is a powerful writer and this is a fine book.
This is a convincing and gripping story of profound relationships forged in a dangerous land, between foreign correspondents covering the Indochina war and with the people whose lives intersect with theirs.
This review by 'The Times' reporter, Erica Wagner, sums it up perfectly: A subtle unfolding of character and history camouflaged in battle-dress; an absorbing portrait of lives lived at the edges of terror and beauty. Koch is a powerful writer and this is a fine book.
October 13, 2021
Meh. I ordinarily love historical fiction and this one, set in the decades of both the Vietnam and Cambodia conflicts promised to be one that I couldn't put down. And to be fair to it and myself, I finished the book. I almost didn't. But man, was it a struggle for me for some reason. And I really can't pinpoint why. I love multiple points of views, changing scenes. In general and fairness, I felt like we got a good portrait of what Langford was like, a huge amount of information about the people and their principles. Just... for some reason, this book just did not click with me. I guess that happens sometimes. But I give it its fair dues. Well-researched, and I really admire how all sides were given a voice.
July 18, 2025
This novel tells the story of the search for Mike Langford, a war photographer with a reputation for risk-taking, who disappears inside Cambodia after its fall to the Khmer-Rouge. The search for him explores the personal highways that led him to war, and to his ultimate fate. It's one of my favourite novels by Koch and (rightly) won the Miles Franklin Award in 1996. Koch is renowned for his excellent descriptions of place, with well crafted scenes of childhood recollections in Tasmania juxtaposed against the chaos of war correspondents in Cambodia. I'll go out on a limb here by saying I think Koch is/was one of Australia's greatest novelists. He died in 2013.
As the story opens in 1976, Mike Langford, a Tasmanian photojournalist whose war coverage has become internationally famous, is reported dead inside Cambodia. Almost simultaneously, back in peaceful Tasmania, Langford's oldest friend—known here only as Ray—receives a collection of tapes that Langford recorded over the years, an ``audio diary'' chronicling his career from his apprentice days in Singapore through his coverage of the Vietnam War and the Cambodian civil war that followed. Using the tapes, Ray tells his old friend's story, letting the tale fall into the third person even as he flies to Thailand to find out what happened.
As the story opens in 1976, Mike Langford, a Tasmanian photojournalist whose war coverage has become internationally famous, is reported dead inside Cambodia. Almost simultaneously, back in peaceful Tasmania, Langford's oldest friend—known here only as Ray—receives a collection of tapes that Langford recorded over the years, an ``audio diary'' chronicling his career from his apprentice days in Singapore through his coverage of the Vietnam War and the Cambodian civil war that followed. Using the tapes, Ray tells his old friend's story, letting the tale fall into the third person even as he flies to Thailand to find out what happened.
July 15, 2017
If you have travelled or wish to travel around parts of SE Asia and are interested in the turbulent history of that part of the world this could be a book for you.The main character, Mike Langford, seems to be based largely on the life of the Australian photographer Neil Davis and sees him involved in the Vietnam war (or the American War if you happen to be Vietnamese !) and the turmoil of the Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge years in Cambodia.I thoroughly enjoyed it.
June 22, 2025
When I started reading this, I was excited. It had been a while since I had read a really good book and this had all the hallmarks of a good read. Unfortunately, this did not continue to be the case. The story became bogged down in too much descriptive writing of the minutiae of the life of this photo journalist Langford. At first it was interesting but soon became pedestrian. I am really disappointed, had to give up and move on.
March 16, 2018
This book is intense!
The story is written in the first person, that makes you feel involved, that makes you cry!
The story is written in the first person, that makes you feel involved, that makes you cry!
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