THE WHITE PORCUPINE is a virtuoso novel. It is a mystery, and an exploration of loyalties: father and daughter, lovers and friends, soldiers and nations. Set in Java in the 1940s and the Netherlands in the 1970s, it tells the peculiar story of Ben Pinksterbloem, a military radio expert caught up in a post-colonial drama. Ben is brave, cunning, and ruthless, but in Java he commits the soldier’s ultimate betrayal.
The novel is based on historical events: the Indonesian War of Independence that ended in 1950, and a series of terrorist “actions” in the Netherlands. It is in part based on a true-life character, a dutch soldier who decided that what his countrymen were doing in Java was wrong, and who switched sides – but at a terrible cost to his family.
ISBN: 978-0-9510596-1-6
Published by Stupor Mundi, 2015
 | Jonathan FallaJonathan Falla was born in Jamaica and read English and Art History at Cambridge. He went to Java to edit magazines for an Indonesian publisher, then worked for Oxfam in Uganda. This led him to qualify as a nurse; he was nursing children until 2006. He has trained paramedics for insurgents in Burma, was Co-ordinator for Save the Children in Darfur, and then their Field Director in Nepal. Jonathan has held a Fullbright Senior Fellowship in screenwriting at the University of Southern California, and teaches creative writing (to both adults and school groups) for the Arvon Foundation. In 2007 he won a Creative Scotland award, the country’s major prize for a new arts project. He is a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund. A lutenist and singer, he also works with a professional early music consort. Jonathan now teaches Creative Writing for the Open University |