 "THE COLLABORATORS")
THE COLLABORATORS: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II
Author: Ian Buruma
Publisher: Penguin Press
Pages: 307
Price: $30
It sounds like a tasteless parlour game: What do a Dutch Jewish fixer, a gender-fluid Manchu princess and a lusty Nazi masseur have in common? At first glance, very little. Yet these three figures feature as the central characters in Ian Buruma’s new group biography, The Collaborators.
What connects this trio, as Buruma presents it, is their outsize, self-delusional fabulism. That, and the fact that each figure — motivated by the prospect of personal gain and pure survival — collaborated with German
