Interpreter from Java

"Arto Nolan is the father's name; his son Alan strives to overcome his loathing and comprehend the man who abused him and beat his mother. His father spent his evenings typing on his Remington. Later, Alan discovers his father had been working on his memoirs.

He reads about Arto's ruthless work as an interpreter who not only translated but also led interrogations, tortured prisoners, and did not hesitate to murder. Arto's passages are chilling in their detachment. He first describes how he was abused as a child by his own father.

He later became an assassin. At first his targets were Japanese; after the occupation ended, he murdered Indonesians in the service of the Dutch, without question. The source of his loyalty to his overlords, from a country he had never seen, remains a mystery.

In this unsparing family history, Birney exposes a crucial chapter in Dutch and European history that was deliberately concealed behind the ideological facade of postwar optimism."--Provided by publisher.