Buruma

When Ian Buruma was growing up in the Netherlands, a comforting mythology shrouded the traumatic German wartime occupation of the country. Though it was acknowledged that a minority of the Dutch had “collaborat actively with the enemy”, he recalls, such “symbols of depravity” only served to “highlight the glowing virtuousness of the plucky majority”. Rejecting such simplistic narratives, this intriguing but rather disjointed book sets out to explore moral ambiguity and degrees of guilt.It does so through the stories of…