The Young Lion D'Alpuget, Blanche

Indonesia, 1969. A young Australian diplomat arrives in Jakarta with ambition burning bright and a keen sense that he's landed in the right place at the right time. The Suharto regime is rising, Cold War tensions are thick, and opportunity — political, personal, financial — is everywhere for those willing to play the game. Blanche d'Alpuget drops you into the humid chaos of post-Sukarno Indonesia with sharp political insight and a clear-eyed view of power, loyalty, and corruption. Her protagonist isn't a hero or a villain — he's a man navigating moral compromise in a world where everyone has an angle. D'Alpuget, who lived in Indonesia as a journalist and would later write the definitive biography of Bob Hawke, knows this world intimately. The result is a novel that reads like a dispatch from inside the machine. Perfect for readers who like their political fiction smart, unsentimental, and set somewhere that actually matters.