RaveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)Readers of Buruma’s previous work, on Japan and on the post-1945 world, will again relish his elegant prose, his weaving of the familial and the personal, the anecdotal and the archival. He evokes delusion and disappointment, fear and indifference, love and more transactional relationships, the quiet heroism of a few and the keeping-one’s-head-down of the many, instances of opportunism and semblances of normality ... Skilfully exposes the complexities of what is required of a human being to remain \'decent\' in wartime under increasing state terror, when lawlessness has become law ... Eloquent, erudite, soberly compassionate.
Thomas Harding
RaveThe Guardian...[a] treasure trove of detail, narrated with a calm dignity ... It is Harding’s great achievement that he has painted a large canvas of history, but done so with glinting individual stories. He has persevered in listening to those 'quiet voices.'
