Summary:

The story takes place in Jakarta during the last year of Sukarno's presidency. Despite the near collapse of the Indonesian economy, President Sukarno continues to spend money on massive projects and mobilize the nation against foreign imperialists, especially the United States and Britain. The Great Leader has pronounced this "the Year of Living Dangerously."

The main protagonists of the novel are several foreign newsmen, in particular, Hamilton, a newly arrived representative of the Australian Broadcasting Service, and Billy Kwan, a free-lance cameraman, also from Australia. Billy is an achondroplastic dwarf, an intense man whose secret fantasy life includes a belief that dwarfs form a separate race.

Billy's onetime hero, Sukarno, has now led Indonesia to the brink of revolution. Billy befriends Hamilton, to whom he also attributes heroic qualities, and the two become inseparable for a while. However, both Hamilton and Sukarno prove that they have clay feet. Hamilton does this by co-opting Billy's fantasy girlfriend. In the climactic last weeks before the Indonesian coup d'etat, Billy is radicalized and decides to take direct action. Realizing that his course of action may be fatal, Billy tries to publicize Sukarno's misuse of power by unfurling an anti-Sukarno banner from a government building in Jakarta. He is killed in the attempt.

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Summary:

In 1848 a member of the Irish gentry named Robert Devereaux is convicted of treason and sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for publishing articles that advocate the violent overthrow of English rule in Ireland. This novel is purportedly based on the journal that Devereaux kept during his years as a prisoner (1848 through 1851).

It begins when he is transported from Ireland to Bermuda, where he spends many months in a prison "hulk." The authorities have to handle him carefully, though, because he is both a gentleman and a symbol of Irish resistance. They do not want to have a martyr on their hands. Thus, when Devereaux develops severe asthma in Bermuda, they send him to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), where he is given a "Ticket-of-Leave"; i. e. he is allowed to live as he wishes in the colony, provided he adheres to certain restrictions and agrees not to attempt escape.

Once in Van Diemen's Land, Devereaux is reunited with other prominent political prisoners. He also meets and falls in loves with Katherine, an Irish Catholic woman, far lower in social class. (Devereaux is a member of the land owning Protestant Ascendancy.)

To be close to Katherine, Devereaux buys a hop farm with an English prisoner named Thomas Langford. The lovers intend to escape to New York together, but Katherine is pregnant. She dies shortly after delivering a healthy son. The despondent Devereaux eventually escapes as the journal ends.

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Summary:

The novel begins in Hobart, Tasmania, in the 1950's. Richard Miller, a student at the Christian Brothers' school, spends his adolescence recovering from the effects of polio. His one friend is Brian Brady, who is expelled from the school after a tiff with a sadistic Brother. Brian finds work and studies the guitar with Clive Broderick, the "doubleman" of the novel's title, an enigmatic occultist who believes in separate worlds of good (invisible) and evil (visible) reality.

Years later, in the freewheeling '60's, Richard has become a television producer in Sydney. He once again encounters Brian and his friend Darcy Burr, who have been eking out a living as a folk singing duo. Darcy, who has inherited Broderick's Gnosticism, is convinced that his group, the Rymers (which soon grows to include Richard's wife Katrin as lead singer), will achieve fame and fortune.

Richard produces a series of television shows, which, in fact, turn the Rymers into a very hot commodity. They are on the verge of a triumphant tour to England when the threads of their complex story begin to unravel.

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