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The Collaborators Ian Buruma

The Collaborators By Ian Buruma

The Collaborators by Ian Buruma


$12.99
Condition - Very Good
6 in stock

Summary

In this spellbinding account of three World War Two collaborators, prize-winning historian Ian Buruma examines questions of truth as he investigates their complex and tangled lives.

The Collaborators Summary

The Collaborators: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II by Ian Buruma

'The Collaborators is at once fascinating and frightening, an apposite tract for our increasingly mendacious, treacherous times.' John Banville

On the face of it, the three characters here seem to have little in common - aside from the fact that each committed wartime acts that led some to see them as national heroes, and others as villains. All three were mythmakers, larger-than-life storytellers, for whom the truth was beside the point.

Felix Kersten was a plump Finnish pleasure-seeker who became Heinrich Himmler's indispensable personal masseur - Himmler calling him his 'magic Buddha'. Kersten presented himself after the war as a resistance hero who convinced Himmler to save countless people from mass murder. Kawashima Yoshiko, a gender fluid Manchu princess, spied for the Japanese secret police in China, and was mythologized by the Japanese as a heroic combination of Mata Hari and Joan of Arc. Friedrich Weinreb was a Hasidic Jew in Holland who took large amounts of money from fellow Jews in an imaginary scheme to save them from deportation, while in fact betraying some of them to the German secret police. Sentenced after the war as a traitor and a con artist, he is still regarded by supporters as the 'Dutch Dreyfus'.

All three figures have been vilified and mythologized, out of a never-ending need, Ian Buruma argues, to see history, and particularly war, and above all World War II, as a neat tale of angels and devils. In telling their often-self-invented stories, The Collaborators offers a fascinating reconstruction of what in fact we can know about these fantasists and what will always remain out of reach. It is also an examination of the power and credibility of history: truth is always a relative concept but perhaps especially so in times of political turmoil, not unlike our own.

The Collaborators Reviews

The Collaborators is at once fascinating and frightening, an apposite tract for our increasingly mendacious, treacherous times. The accounts Ian Buruma gives of the lives and dark doings of three egregious collaborators starkly illustrate our depthless capacity for betrayal and subsequent self-justification; they are also fascinating life studies. It would be shocking to be entertained by such a book, but I was. -- John Banville
With impressive skill and meticulous research, Buruma has woven three very different wartime characters into a fascinating tale of alternative realities, riven by mythomania, perfidy and collusion. -- Caroline Moorehead
Compulsively readable as always, Buruma has taken a riveting subject - collaboration - and delved deep into it, probing concepts of national identity, self-reinvention, loyalty and treason. -- Simon Callow
These unforgettable true stories from terrible days show ruthless survivors using all the tricks of stage farce - storytelling, double-crossing, cross-dressing - to avoid the firing squads or the gas chambers. The human comedy has never been so bleak - or so human. -- James Hawes
Mythmakers, duplicitous self-aggrandizers and deluders star in these three wartime narratives of both East and West. Ian Buruma weaves their stories together with great skill and panache, all the while challenging history and our own time's elision of wish and truth. -- Lisa Appignanesi
We are slowly coming to an understanding that the Second World War is a more twisted tale than our black-and-white stories about heroes made us believe. The evil guys remain evil, but what about the good ones? Time allows us a more nuanced look, and The Collaborators does a formidable job at navigating the muddy waters of an epic battle that was a challenge to each person going through it - a challenge that truly makes for an interesting history. -- Norman Ohler
At a time when manifold forms of authoritarianism are on the rise, this book could not be more welcome and necessary. By masterfully exploring the complicity, guilt and ambivalence pervading three parallel lives in imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and occupied Holland, Buruma conjures up and richly evokes a thick web of history, allowing contemporary readers to understand how easy it is to condone systematic violence and untold suffering in the name of misguided ideals. -- Ariel Dorfman

About Ian Buruma

Ian Buruma was born in the Netherlands. He studied Chinese at Leiden University and cinema at Nihon University, Tokyo. He has lived and worked in Tokyo, Hong Kong, London and New York. He is a regular contributor to Harper's and The New Yorker and writes monthly columns for Project Syndicate and Bloomberg. He is a professor at Bard College and lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

1: PARADISE LOST 2: IN ANOTHER COUNTRY 3: MIRACLES 4: A LOW, DISHONEST DECADE 5: CROSSING THE LINE 6: BEAUTIFUL STORIES 7: THE SHOOTING PARTY 8: THE ENDGAME 9: FINALE 10: AFTERMATH

Additional information

GOR013271623
9781838957650
1838957650
The Collaborators: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II by Ian Buruma
Used - Very Good
Hardback
Atlantic Books
2023-03-09
320
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - The Collaborators