Christopher Koch

For the film and television director, see Chris Koch.

Christopher Koch AO
Born	Christopher John Koch (1932-07-16)16 July 1932 Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Died	Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Occupation	Novelist
Language	English
Nationality	Australian
Alma mater	University of Tasmania
Notable works	The Year of Living Dangerously
Notable awards	Miles Franklin Award (1985, 1996)
Spouse	Irene Vilnois (m. 1959–79) Robin Whyte-Butler
Children	Gareth Koch

Christopher John Koch AO (16 July 1932 – 23 September 2013) was an Australian novelist, known for his 1978 novel The Year of Living Dangerously, which was adapted into an award-winning film. He twice won the Miles Franklin Award (for the The Doubleman in 1985, and Highways to a War in 1996). In 1995, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for contribution to Australian literature, and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from his alma mater, the University of Tasmania in 1990.

Biography

Koch was born in Hobart, Tasmania in 1932. He was educated at Clemes College, St Virgil's College, Hobart High School and the University of Tasmania. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in 1954, he joined the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) as a cadet journalist. He left Hobart to travel in south Asia and Europe, and ended up in London where he worked for several years until he returned to Australia to avoid national service in the British Army. While working in London as a waiter and a teacher, Koch began working on his first novel, The Boys in the Island, which he left with his agent when he returned to Australia.

Koch's first published works were several poems published in The Bulletin and the literary journal Southerly. While back at the ABC as a radio producer, The Boys in the Island was published in the UK, with the positive reviews encouraging Koch to eventually take up writing full-time in 1972. In the early 1960s, Koch was awarded a writing fellowship to Stanford University, where he taught literature and was associated with Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest).

Koch's brother, Phillip Koch reporting for ABC-TV in April 1967 towards the end of the Sukarno era

His novel The Year of Living Dangerously, set in Jakarta during the fall of the Sukarno regime, was made into a film directed by Peter Weir and starring Sigourney Weaver, Mel Gibson and Linda Hunt. The book was loosely inspired by his brother's (Philip Koch) experience as an Australian journalist in Indonesia during that period.

Koch died at his home in Hobart on 23 September 2013, aged 81. He had been diagnosed with cancer twelve months earlier.

Personal life

Koch married his first wife, Irene Vilnois, in 1959. Their son, Gareth Koch (born 1962), is a classical guitarist. He married his second wife, Robin Whyte-Butler, in the late 1990s, and she lived with him in Sydney and Tasmania, and was with him when he died in 2013.

Awards

Miles Franklin Award	The Doubleman, winner 1985
	Highways to a War, winner 1996
	The Memory Room, longlisted 2008
The Age Book of the Year Award	The Year of Living Dangerously, 1978 Imaginative Writing Prize winner; 1978 Book of the Year, joint winner
National Book Council Award for Australian Literature	The Year of Living Dangerously, 1979
Colin Roderick Award	Out of Ireland, 1999
Victorian Premier's Literary Award	Out of Ireland, 2000

Books

• The Boys in the Island (1958, revised ed, Angus & Robertson, 1974)
• Across the Sea Wall (Heinemann, 1965)
• The Year of Living Dangerously (Nelson, 1978)
• The Doubleman (Chatto and Windus, 1985)
• Crossing the Gap: a novelist’s essays (Hogarth Press, 1993)
• Highways to a War (Heinemann, 1995)
• Out of Ireland (Doubleday, 1999)
• The Memory Room (2007)
• Lost Voices (2012)

Further reading

Noel Henricksen, Island and Otherland: Christopher Koch and his books (Educare, 2003).

External links

• Christopher Koch at the Internet Movie Database
• Christopher Koch at Random House Australia
• Podcast of Christopher Koch discussing “Crossing the Gap: Asia and the Australian Imagination” at the Shanghai International Literary Festival