SOURCE: “The Ambiguity of Heroism,” in The London Review of Books, Vol. 13, May 9, 1991, p. 24.

In the following review, Billen focuses on the tone and theme of The Redundancy of Courage.

The title of Timothy Mo’s fourth novel both captures its sardonic tone and crystallises the question it asks. If death refuses to be out-stared, is bravery in its face an irrelevance? The Redundancy of Courage asks the same question about heroism as Lord Jim, whose location it recalls, and The Red Badge of Courage, whose title it modifies. It refuses to give a straight answer. It redirects the question at the reader.

Mo’s narrator is Ng, a Western-educated Chinese man, who has returned to Danu, his native island in the Timor Sea, and built a hotel. Asking us to simulate the strain of a constipated bowel-movement when pronouncing his name, Ng describes himself as a “citizen...