Vale UTAS alumnus, writer Christopher Koch
One of Australia’s leading authors, UTAS alumnus Christopher Koch, has died at the age of 81.
The Hobart-born author won the Miles Franklin twice, in 1985 for The Doubleman, and in 1996 for Highways to War.
But he is best known for The Year of Living Dangerously, published in 1978, not least because of Peter Weir’s film version starring Mel Gibson, a character loosely inspired by his younger brother's (Philip Koch) experience as an Australian journalist in Indonesia during the Sukarno regime.
His last novel, Lost Voices – an evocative picture of life in Moonah, Newtown and Glenorchy in the 1940s - was shortlisted for the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
Poet Jamie Grant, who launched Lost Voices in Hobart last September, then hailed him as Australia’s finest living writer of fiction. “This is not the first time I have made this suggestion regarding his stature; it is one I believe it would have been possible to support even while Patrick White was still alive,” he said.
Koch was born in Hobart in 1932 and graduated from UTAS in 1954 with a BA (First-Class Honours). He was admitted as a Doctor of Letters in 1990.
A full-time writer since 1972, he had also worked as a producer for the ABC in Sydney.
In 1995 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his contribution to Australian literature.
Koch's second wife, Robin, was with him when he died in Hobart on Sunday night, almost 12 months after being diagnosed with cancer. He is also survived by his son Gareth Koch, a lecturer in classical guitar at UTAS Conservatorium of Music, and his brother Philip.