Ian Buruma's spellbinding account of three near-mythic 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. On the face of it, the three characters in this book seem to have little in common--aside from the fact that each committed wartime acts that led some to see them as national heroes, and others as villains. All three were mythmakers, larger-than-life storytellers,... Celý popis

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Ian Buruma's spellbinding account of three near-mythic 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.
On the face of it, the three characters in this book seem to have little in common--aside from the fact that each committed wartime acts that led some to see them as national heroes, and others as villains. All three were mythmakers, larger-than-life storytellers, for whom the truth was beside the point. Felix Kersten was a plump Finnish pleasure-seeker who became Heinrich Himmler's indispensable personal masseur--Himmler calling him his "magic Buddha." Kersten presented himself after the war as a resistance hero who convinced Himmler to save countless people from mass murder. Kawashima Yoshiko, a gender-fluid Manchu princess, spied for
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Parametry

Počet stran 320
Výrobce PENGUIN PR
Vazba Pevná
Jazyk anglické
Váha 562 gramů
ISBN 0593296648