The I Index

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

Bottom of the pile

15

/100

I Index Overall Rating

Readers

15/100

Critics

16/100

Scholars

N/A

Author:

Ian Buruma

Publisher:

Penguin Press

Date:

March 7, 2023

An account of three figures—a Dutch fixer, a Manchu princess, and Himmler's masseur—who may have been con artists and collaborators under Japanese and German rule, or true heroes, or something in between.

What The Reviewers Say

Diane Cole,
The Wall Street Journal
So much sleaze oozes out of the morally compromised subjects in Ian Buruma’s disquieting group portrait... that nearly every page leaves a stain of betrayal.
Lesley M. M. Blume,
The New York Times Book Review
Buruma has long demonstrated an ability to depict even horrific wartime events with remove.
Michael Rodriguez,
Library Journal
Meticulously, relentlessly, Buruma dissects these collaborators’ contradictory and self-serving accounts and cross-references with other sources to get closer to the truth.
Matthew Reisz,
The Observer (UK)
This intriguing but rather disjointed book sets out to explore moral ambiguity and degrees of guilt.