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The Redundancy Of Courage
Winner of the E.M. Forster Award and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, this brutal and beautiful narration of the guerrilla war against the Indonesians in Timor, praised by Fretilin Foreign Minister and Nobel prize-winner Jose Ramos-Hortafor its 'perfect authenticity', reappears now in this handsome edition at a topical moment in history as Timor fully joins the UN at last.
446 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
July 17, 2022
Another book that I read because of its Booker shortlisting - this is an impressive piece of writing, but due to the brutality of the events it described it is not always enjoyable to read. The narrator and main protagonist Adolph Ng is a citizen of the small island community of Danu, of Chinese descent. The setting is fictional, but bears strong similarities to East Timor - a divided island north of Australia part of which was a Portuguese colony and became a war zone after the Portuguese left, but Mo adds to the disguise by describing the people of the larger country who occupy the island as Malai, whereas East Timor was occupied by Indonesia.
The narrator returns to the island after going to university in Toronto, and runs a hotel. He is friendly with but not entirely trusted by the members of what becomes the guerilla resistance army. After the "Malai" attack and occupy the main port, his hotel is used as a base by the Malai army, but he is captured by the guerrillas in a raid and becomes an important participant in their campaign, initially as a bomb maker. Eventually he is captured again, and manages to find a role working for a Malai general.
This allows Mo to explore many different perspectives on the war, and his descriptions of its atrocities are unsparing, and the writing and attention to detail are impressive. So well worth reading as long as you have a strong stomach.
The narrator returns to the island after going to university in Toronto, and runs a hotel. He is friendly with but not entirely trusted by the members of what becomes the guerilla resistance army. After the "Malai" attack and occupy the main port, his hotel is used as a base by the Malai army, but he is captured by the guerrillas in a raid and becomes an important participant in their campaign, initially as a bomb maker. Eventually he is captured again, and manages to find a role working for a Malai general.
This allows Mo to explore many different perspectives on the war, and his descriptions of its atrocities are unsparing, and the writing and attention to detail are impressive. So well worth reading as long as you have a strong stomach.
March 23, 2014
The novel is set in a fictional country based on East Timor. The characters are fictional, but they are closely based on people involved in events in East Timor during 1975. The author is from Hong Kong and UK, but I am using the setting for my Around the World (in 52 Books) Challenge.
The events in this story are often grim and graphic. There are no truly 'good' characters, but they are real characters in unreal situations acting as people might in those circumstances. I suppose this could be seen as a political thriller with an examination of national identity, loyalty, humanity and courage versus expediency. There is also a gay subtext.
It is beautifully written and I will be reading more books by this author.
The events in this story are often grim and graphic. There are no truly 'good' characters, but they are real characters in unreal situations acting as people might in those circumstances. I suppose this could be seen as a political thriller with an examination of national identity, loyalty, humanity and courage versus expediency. There is also a gay subtext.
It is beautifully written and I will be reading more books by this author.
September 12, 2021
A simply fantastic book. After a brutal beginning the book settles down to consider the occupation of East Timor by Indonisia. Not for the faint hearted, if you can survive the first 20 pages then you will be rewarded with a brilliant read. How this book failed to win the Booker prize, or indeed receive international recognition I will never know.
March 18, 2020
Two virtues mark out this novel as one of extraordinary strength – story and narrator.
The story is that of the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor, the bloody suppression of its left-wing administration and supporters accounting for more than 200,000 lives, and the at times equally merciless guerrilla warfare waged by opposition forces that ensued.
The names are lightly disguised; even Portugal, the former colonial power, is referred to only as ‘the Home country.’ But the specificity and the outrage could not be clearer, nor the blame for what happened.
‘What Fakoum [the fictional East Timorese ruling party] did in its short life .. has never been relevant so much as what the Americans and the malais [invaders] said Fakoum would have done,’ we are told. And just three pages from the end, there emerges another motive for Western encouragement of the take-over.
The plot is full of incident, chiefly during the long central chapter following the guerrillas’ [never called ‘freedom fighters’] flight and campaign in the jungle and mountains of the interior, culminating in an unexpected climax and a resolution of sorts.
That meticulous account would be sufficiently interesting and vivid in itself to commend the book, but what gives it extra weight is the character of its narrator, the homosexual Chinese hotel-owner turned bomb-maker Adolphe Ng.
Abused, self-deprecating, accommodating, calculating, he is by turns horrified and grimly fascinated by all he witnesses. Even before his abduction and forced recruitment by the rebels, we get a sense of the man in his not unkind but seignorial treatment of his vulnerable staff. ‘My peons were young people .. A lucky one might share my bed for part of the night.’ Lucky for one, maybe.
Ng has had a liberal education, studied in Toronto, played a leading part in an intellectual group debating modern literature. Yet this is the man who becomes in his own words ‘the Leonardo of guerrilla warfare’, devising explosive devices calculated to cause maximum suffering rather than quick death.
He is nauseated by the killings, but able to give his testimony in a clear voice that avoids any element of special pleading. It is honesty that hurts and makes on grieve for the man. Of the infants who were among those who died of starvation on the long march, he writes: ‘I don’t count those. They were the product of the liaisons between the fighters and the washerwomen. … We didn’t notice or, to be honest, care. They’d never been people, except perhaps as a theological point.’
Ng is caustic in his criticism, but always a criticism that includes himself, as when he describes East Timor politics. It was not democracy, ‘we [note the pronoun] operated the politics of the grudge.’
One can imagine Timothy Mo researching the story from the many non-fiction accounts of the conflict, but to this he adds a string of sharply differentiated characters, the brave, charismatic Osvaldo and his contemplative brother-in-arms Martinho, the idealistic but soon to be disillusioned Raoul and his bad poetry, the heroic Maria and Mrs Goreng, the upwardly mobile but not unsympathetic Mrs Goreng, wife of a malai colonel.
I had not particularly liked Mo’s earlier Sour sweet and An insular possession – both also short-listed for the Booker Prize – although a gripping read, was at times long-winded in its structure of verbose 19th Century newspaper extracts.
The redundancy of courage therefore surprised me as perhaps the finest account of guerrilla warfare, the reality of a conflict by definition normally hidden from view, I’ve ever read. A perfect alliance of story and story-teller.
The story is that of the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor, the bloody suppression of its left-wing administration and supporters accounting for more than 200,000 lives, and the at times equally merciless guerrilla warfare waged by opposition forces that ensued.
The names are lightly disguised; even Portugal, the former colonial power, is referred to only as ‘the Home country.’ But the specificity and the outrage could not be clearer, nor the blame for what happened.
‘What Fakoum [the fictional East Timorese ruling party] did in its short life .. has never been relevant so much as what the Americans and the malais [invaders] said Fakoum would have done,’ we are told. And just three pages from the end, there emerges another motive for Western encouragement of the take-over.
The plot is full of incident, chiefly during the long central chapter following the guerrillas’ [never called ‘freedom fighters’] flight and campaign in the jungle and mountains of the interior, culminating in an unexpected climax and a resolution of sorts.
That meticulous account would be sufficiently interesting and vivid in itself to commend the book, but what gives it extra weight is the character of its narrator, the homosexual Chinese hotel-owner turned bomb-maker Adolphe Ng.
Abused, self-deprecating, accommodating, calculating, he is by turns horrified and grimly fascinated by all he witnesses. Even before his abduction and forced recruitment by the rebels, we get a sense of the man in his not unkind but seignorial treatment of his vulnerable staff. ‘My peons were young people .. A lucky one might share my bed for part of the night.’ Lucky for one, maybe.
Ng has had a liberal education, studied in Toronto, played a leading part in an intellectual group debating modern literature. Yet this is the man who becomes in his own words ‘the Leonardo of guerrilla warfare’, devising explosive devices calculated to cause maximum suffering rather than quick death.
He is nauseated by the killings, but able to give his testimony in a clear voice that avoids any element of special pleading. It is honesty that hurts and makes on grieve for the man. Of the infants who were among those who died of starvation on the long march, he writes: ‘I don’t count those. They were the product of the liaisons between the fighters and the washerwomen. … We didn’t notice or, to be honest, care. They’d never been people, except perhaps as a theological point.’
Ng is caustic in his criticism, but always a criticism that includes himself, as when he describes East Timor politics. It was not democracy, ‘we [note the pronoun] operated the politics of the grudge.’
One can imagine Timothy Mo researching the story from the many non-fiction accounts of the conflict, but to this he adds a string of sharply differentiated characters, the brave, charismatic Osvaldo and his contemplative brother-in-arms Martinho, the idealistic but soon to be disillusioned Raoul and his bad poetry, the heroic Maria and Mrs Goreng, the upwardly mobile but not unsympathetic Mrs Goreng, wife of a malai colonel.
I had not particularly liked Mo’s earlier Sour sweet and An insular possession – both also short-listed for the Booker Prize – although a gripping read, was at times long-winded in its structure of verbose 19th Century newspaper extracts.
The redundancy of courage therefore surprised me as perhaps the finest account of guerrilla warfare, the reality of a conflict by definition normally hidden from view, I’ve ever read. A perfect alliance of story and story-teller.
August 4, 2012
One of the best books I have ever read, unrelenting in its exmanination of courage and weakness and corruption and power.
January 25, 2021
I was going to rap Timothy once more on this writing skills, 'it takes a long time to say anything in old entish'. Hes got a vivid imagination, one that can sometimes take a while to get to the point. But man was a blown off the hinges by this one; its definitly super underrated. Underlying meanings: what to make of the world after the 20th century, the contrast between backwater countries with the 20th century technology, how peoples lives get chuncked up into news headlines, how we are as imperfect, cowardly, snap decision making creatures in the heat of the moment behave in the face of impossible decisions. And to put a cherry on top the main character is the sleaziest, manipulative little gay Asian rat bag with a self depreciating sense of humour who you hate but at the same time can't. It had all the elements of a perfect 3 dimensional story. Yeah, just cut down on the waffle. That will stick with me.
December 31, 2018
Thinly disguised fiction used to tell the story of the resistence to the Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste. Great story.
May 11, 2019
This book tells of guerilla war against uniformed Indonesians attempting to take over an island which I assume is Timor, in southeast Asia. It is an account of bloody encounters punctuating a harsh life in the bush, with quite a change toward the end. It is the personal account of an ethnic Chinese who considers himself a native, a man who is also homosexual. Being alien in two ways in life or death situations that cry out for trust between individuals makes his a gripping story.
The title of this book might have been "The Chameleon" because the protagonist is a self-denigrating cynic who chooses the path of self-preservation in every instance while all around him dedicate themselves to one thing or another that brings them their doom. In the art of survival, Adolph Ng is wise. While learning the art of guerilla war, adapting to any circumstance, his incisive characterizations of those around him provides a realistic tale for anyone who can endure the endless bloodletting told in great detail. If you like the technical, you'll like reading all about firepower great and small, calibers of bullets and characteristics of explosives. Excerpts of the book could be used as a sales device for the OH-10 Bronco aircraft, bane of guerillas.
Adolph (and yes, one character calls him Hitler) can be revolted by bloodshed, but then will enthusiastically work on methods to kill others in ways that will make their end particularly excruciating. He speaks often of his compatriots living for the moment, yet he above all does so. He is not a man the reader will love, but a storyteller well worth hearing, one that will force you to ask yourself what you would do in similar circumstances. The writing is outstanding in this fictional work that breathes and bleeds reality.
The title of this book might have been "The Chameleon" because the protagonist is a self-denigrating cynic who chooses the path of self-preservation in every instance while all around him dedicate themselves to one thing or another that brings them their doom. In the art of survival, Adolph Ng is wise. While learning the art of guerilla war, adapting to any circumstance, his incisive characterizations of those around him provides a realistic tale for anyone who can endure the endless bloodletting told in great detail. If you like the technical, you'll like reading all about firepower great and small, calibers of bullets and characteristics of explosives. Excerpts of the book could be used as a sales device for the OH-10 Bronco aircraft, bane of guerillas.
Adolph (and yes, one character calls him Hitler) can be revolted by bloodshed, but then will enthusiastically work on methods to kill others in ways that will make their end particularly excruciating. He speaks often of his compatriots living for the moment, yet he above all does so. He is not a man the reader will love, but a storyteller well worth hearing, one that will force you to ask yourself what you would do in similar circumstances. The writing is outstanding in this fictional work that breathes and bleeds reality.
March 22, 2025
read around the world: east timor: this one was written from the perspective of a funny character but the book itself was a drag. maybe i’m just tired of war books for the moment.
February 11, 2016
It took me a number of attempts to get into this book, whose narrator and protagonist is unlikeable and whose subject matter is unpleasant. However, I'm glad I persevered. This is an unflinching account of the invasion of a fictional Asian country, the resistance, and the international reaction. It is shocking but I'm afraid, consistently and luminously believable.
[spoilers below]
There are heroes - flawed heroes certainly, but heroes they recognisably are. But their resistance to the invasion, in the end, counts for nothing: hence the novel's title. Timothy Mo is particularly good at depicting the various shades of bravery, loyalty, ruthlessness, cunning and stupidity of the resistance fighters - quickly branded as terrorists by the oppressors - and the physical and emotional torments that they have to undergo, all the time trying to cling to the last vestiges of their humanity. It's powerful writing.
What makes the book so distinctive, though, is the narrator, a kind of antihero who describes these many and various tribulations with an tone of detachment and irony that at first seems vaguely repulsive, but which in the end is perhaps the one thing that makes the story bearable. He is an outsider in many respects - gay, and of Chinese parentage. Yet he is drawn deeply into the conflict, first on one side, then the other, and provides a touchpoint of relative sanity for the reader in what can be a harrowing read.
Mo's research for the book must have been painstaking, right down to the kind of booby traps planted by the resistance fighters, the specific weapons they use, and other nitty gritty details of guerrilla warfare. He gives us a powerful sense of the visceral realities of this sort of conflict, and the book's action sequences are realistic as well as exciting. But he's also concerned with the bigger picture: how the invasion is justified to, and eventually accepted by the wider world, how a population is enslaved and beaten into compliance. Though I understand the book was written in response to the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, it has a much wider relevance to any unequal conflict of oppressor and oppressed. It is easy to see parallels with more recent events - Russia in Crimea, for instance, post-justified its annexation with a referendum, just as the invaders do in this novel.
The book's ending is a hopeful one: Mo's protagonist concludes that whatever the violence of an occupying power, it is impossible to eradicate a people's identity. However, it is hard not to be left with a depressing sense that the sequence of events depicted in this story has happened countless times and will happen countless more times. Political institutions provide the slimmest of protections against the violence of superior force, and the world is all too ready to turn a deaf ear to the sufferings of disempowered minorities.
[spoilers below]
There are heroes - flawed heroes certainly, but heroes they recognisably are. But their resistance to the invasion, in the end, counts for nothing: hence the novel's title. Timothy Mo is particularly good at depicting the various shades of bravery, loyalty, ruthlessness, cunning and stupidity of the resistance fighters - quickly branded as terrorists by the oppressors - and the physical and emotional torments that they have to undergo, all the time trying to cling to the last vestiges of their humanity. It's powerful writing.
What makes the book so distinctive, though, is the narrator, a kind of antihero who describes these many and various tribulations with an tone of detachment and irony that at first seems vaguely repulsive, but which in the end is perhaps the one thing that makes the story bearable. He is an outsider in many respects - gay, and of Chinese parentage. Yet he is drawn deeply into the conflict, first on one side, then the other, and provides a touchpoint of relative sanity for the reader in what can be a harrowing read.
Mo's research for the book must have been painstaking, right down to the kind of booby traps planted by the resistance fighters, the specific weapons they use, and other nitty gritty details of guerrilla warfare. He gives us a powerful sense of the visceral realities of this sort of conflict, and the book's action sequences are realistic as well as exciting. But he's also concerned with the bigger picture: how the invasion is justified to, and eventually accepted by the wider world, how a population is enslaved and beaten into compliance. Though I understand the book was written in response to the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, it has a much wider relevance to any unequal conflict of oppressor and oppressed. It is easy to see parallels with more recent events - Russia in Crimea, for instance, post-justified its annexation with a referendum, just as the invaders do in this novel.
The book's ending is a hopeful one: Mo's protagonist concludes that whatever the violence of an occupying power, it is impossible to eradicate a people's identity. However, it is hard not to be left with a depressing sense that the sequence of events depicted in this story has happened countless times and will happen countless more times. Political institutions provide the slimmest of protections against the violence of superior force, and the world is all too ready to turn a deaf ear to the sufferings of disempowered minorities.
July 15, 2013
The Redundancy of Courage Is set in the fictitious country of Danu in Southeast Asia, which appears to be based on East Timor,
Danu is a Portuguese colony. it is invaded and occupied by its neighbour, which is not named, but sounds like Indonesia. Danu is annexed by the malai and it becomes their fifty eighth province.
The characters are fictional, bur I have read that many of them are based on people who were involved in events in East Timor in 1975.
The narrator's almost disinterested tone seems to be influenced by his outsider status, a Chinese gay man, educated in Canada, living in a country not his own. It left me wanted to know more about him.
And why did the Americans become interested enough to provide bombers, and aide the Malai/Indonesians? Apparently a deep channel, one of only three in the archipelago, was capable of allowing a nuclear submarine safe passage. Further proof, if proof was needed, that the only interest in Foreign Policy is self-interest.
This is a story about jungle warfare, starvation, factionalism & betrayal but also about survival & is a most engaging read, if you have the stomach for it.
Danu is a Portuguese colony. it is invaded and occupied by its neighbour, which is not named, but sounds like Indonesia. Danu is annexed by the malai and it becomes their fifty eighth province.
The characters are fictional, bur I have read that many of them are based on people who were involved in events in East Timor in 1975.
The narrator's almost disinterested tone seems to be influenced by his outsider status, a Chinese gay man, educated in Canada, living in a country not his own. It left me wanted to know more about him.
And why did the Americans become interested enough to provide bombers, and aide the Malai/Indonesians? Apparently a deep channel, one of only three in the archipelago, was capable of allowing a nuclear submarine safe passage. Further proof, if proof was needed, that the only interest in Foreign Policy is self-interest.
This is a story about jungle warfare, starvation, factionalism & betrayal but also about survival & is a most engaging read, if you have the stomach for it.
May 31, 2011
A stunning and powerful book beautifully written, telling the story of the war in East Timor
May 29, 2023
An oppressive account of futility in the face of force. I won't say this was an enjoyable read. Long and graphic books about war come with gut punches more than serotonin hits. Timothy Mo, though, manages to imbue his thinly-veiled account of the 1970s East Timorese conflict with propulsive plotting and his usual fluidly descriptive prose.
This one falls into the same group as Keneally's 'Schindler's Ark' and Ballard's 'Empire of the Sun', as a grimly gritty slog about underground resistance. These are books I can deeply admire but would be hard-pressed to want to revisit at leisure.
I was aware of the East Timor conflict in my 1990s adolescence, but it was limited to the periphery of my consciousness. For all my squinting at brutal moments (fast bullets, slow starvation), I was glad to be properly introduced to some of the themes that lay behind the insurgency. The Booker Prize in the 1980s has been an excellent prompt to learning even a little about more distant places and times. I may not like the gut punches, but they finally got to reach me.
I followed this one up with a short podcast on East Timor. The good news appears to be that since peace in the early 2000s, this very young nation (average age late teens) has become one of (perhaps the) most democratic nations in South East Asia. There is no such thing as a happy ending in politics, but it's a rare and welcome thing when the real world offers more scope for optimism than earlier fictions.
This one falls into the same group as Keneally's 'Schindler's Ark' and Ballard's 'Empire of the Sun', as a grimly gritty slog about underground resistance. These are books I can deeply admire but would be hard-pressed to want to revisit at leisure.
I was aware of the East Timor conflict in my 1990s adolescence, but it was limited to the periphery of my consciousness. For all my squinting at brutal moments (fast bullets, slow starvation), I was glad to be properly introduced to some of the themes that lay behind the insurgency. The Booker Prize in the 1980s has been an excellent prompt to learning even a little about more distant places and times. I may not like the gut punches, but they finally got to reach me.
I followed this one up with a short podcast on East Timor. The good news appears to be that since peace in the early 2000s, this very young nation (average age late teens) has become one of (perhaps the) most democratic nations in South East Asia. There is no such thing as a happy ending in politics, but it's a rare and welcome thing when the real world offers more scope for optimism than earlier fictions.
March 2, 2020
Arriving very late to the Timothy Mo party I greatly enjoyed the novel. It appeared to continue somewhat Sarkhan another fictitious book set in murky South East Asian politics but published a couple of decades earlier.
October 7, 2020
Well written book with realistic characters.
February 7, 2021
Read this many years ago and found it in a box of old books recently. Read through parts again and put it away for future re-read. A brilliant book, not only for description of East Timor's fight for independence, but as a superb character study - Ng's experience of being thrown into the fight is a totally realistic portrait of a sort of reluctant but unavoidable "heroism" in the face of conflicting personal and political challenges and extreme physical threat. There is a lot of graphic violence and horror but the reader's empathy with Ng drags them screaming all the way. Uncomfortable questions asked and no simple solutions offered by Mo in this marvelous book. Also recommended his Insular Possession and Sour Sweet.
March 17, 2017
A fascinating, thinly-veiled fictitious account of East Timor's bid for independence. The events are viewed through the eyes of Adolf Ng, a witness to the whole process, who's main concern is trying to survive and escape with his life. It's incredibly depressing to watch as Danu's attempt at independence starts with optimism and ends in despair as Indonesian crushes the fledgling country and brings it under its control, while the world watches. Devastating.
September 23, 2013
Very imaginative, well researched description and hence plausible description of an insurgency.
Grammar weak in places, for instance uses "he" as a pronoun for "one" which can be slightly distracting at times.
Generally well told and disturbing, it is about a person's will to survive. The main character is from an ethnic and sexual minority, gains respect and recognition in the rebel movement but never really belongs, so he finds it easy to reinvent himself to survive
Grammar weak in places, for instance uses "he" as a pronoun for "one" which can be slightly distracting at times.
Generally well told and disturbing, it is about a person's will to survive. The main character is from an ethnic and sexual minority, gains respect and recognition in the rebel movement but never really belongs, so he finds it easy to reinvent himself to survive
March 11, 2016
I wanted to like this book. Parts were pretty good, and considering he never went to Timor, he seemed to get a lot of the stuff right. However, it was a classic case of telling rather than showing a lot of his stuff, and I felt next to nothing for all of the characters. I would not have finished this book if it wasn't based on Timor.
August 8, 2012
I didn't know about the plight of East Timor until I read this. Happliy the civil war ended years ago. The second part of this book contains an incedible extended sequence of relentless guerilla warfare that is ghastly, exhausting and brilliant
February 13, 2016
This book is based on East Timor. I would never have believed I could enjoy a book with such detailed battle descriptions but I was riveted. The character of Adolph is perfectly balanced. Flawed and frail, but caught up in extraordinary guerilla war.
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August 2, 2011I found it took a while for me to get into this book but once I got there I found this a tremendous read. It is very well written - compelling and informative at the same time.
November 25, 2011
I read Sweet Sour and really enjoyed it. This left me so cold that I abandoned it at around Chapter 6.
June 6, 2015
Not bad for a war book - but just too much violence for me. The narrator makes it bearable since he is not blood-thirsty and quite squeamish.
October 20, 2010
historical fiction about the tragedy of East Timor, will make you cry and laugh aloud
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August 26, 2018outstanding!
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews