Timothy Mo, The Redundancy of Courage

Elaine Ho (University of Hong Kong)

Ed. by John Thieme, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 10.3.5: South Asian Diasporic Literature and Culture, 1800-present.
Vol. editors: Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Pavan Kumar Malreddy (J W Goethe University of Frankfurt), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège), Muneeza Shamsie (Independent Scholar - Asia), Niaz Zaman (Independent University Bangladesh)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1991

Places

Hong Kong (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

The Redundancy of Courage (1991) is narrated in the first-person. This is a crucial issue since the narrator, Adolph Ng, is participant and survivor of the political upheavals in the fictional island of Danu, and the novel is supposedly his eye-witness account of what happened. Danu, which distinctly resembles East Timor, is a former Portuguese colony, and after independence, the members of the anti-colonial movement become leaders of the new nation. But this period of autonomy is short-lived; Danu’s powerful neighbour, the Malai, quickly moves in to fill the space vacated by European imperialism. After a period of guerilla resistance, the Danuese leadership is decimated as the nation ceases to exist; Ng, a lone …

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1289 words

Citation: Ho, Elaine. "The Redundancy of Courage". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 February 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7551, accessed 04 May 2024.]

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