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macrocosmic supremacy of which the war in Southeast Asia is but the eye. The journalists are
drawn out of their natural but desertificated habitats into the storm by the presence of a
seemingly life-nourishing ‘Otherworld’, whose access lies barely hidden in the bustling
markets and streets of Jakarta, Saigon and Phnom Penh. The unknown world they enter is the
plane of the looking-glass, the point of conjunction where the ‘self’ and ‘Other’ exchange roles
and merge. It is a land of imagination and shadow where the forces of light and dark, good and
evil have massed to bring to a final decision the war begun with the great battle of the
Mahabharata. This land is Koch’s perception of the ‘Otherworld’ where nature might no
longer be an antagonistic element to human presence, and the virtues of dharma reign. Yet, it
is also a world where one can become intoxicated with the illusion which threatens to
overwhelm reality. Finally, it is precisely by taking the risks of passing through the looking-
glass between the worlds that one might finally solve the riddle of identity.
Chapter 13, ‘Crossing to the Other Bank’, applies the problems of time and meaning
raised in Koch’s earlier novels to the case of Highways to a War. First, however, the de-
orientalist stance is considered for its condemnation of d’Alpuget and Koch’s use of old
Orientalist stereotypes in their novels. The de-orientalist goal would be to wipe the slate clean
and let Australia and Asia simply concentrate on future business relations; yet this is
demonstrated to be little more than a new paint job on the old Orientalist machine, and would
in Koch’s view make progress in clearing up the questions of Australian and Asian identity
ever more difficult, for the identity of each is necessarily a hybrid of the two. If Highways to a
War were just a mystery about what happened to Mike Langford, then the de-orientalists
would have a good argument. It is, however, more about who (or rather what) he is, and, as
with d’Alpuget’s character analyses, this justifies Koch’s incorporating all forms of old
metaphors and stereotypes.
Time is a concept which is both concrete and abstract at once, for it must satisfy the
needs of living our daily lives which are both linear and circular, finite and infinite, real and
illusory. It is, therefore, a notion whose Western perception approaches the Eastern very
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