MY FATHER'S WAR
by Adriaan van Dis
My Father's War ($23.00; June 26, 1996; 272 pp.; 1-56584-033-X). This unusual novel, by a prominent Dutch author well known for his work with PEN and other international literary organizations, records the investigation of its middle- aged protagonist, who was born in Holland after WW II, into the wartime ordeal endured by his half-Indonesian family in a Japanese prison camp. Sober and studied—and more than a little stiff—the story nevertheless evinces a teasing complexity, especially as its narrator comes slowly to comprehend the forces that made his enigmatic, damaged father the man he helplessly became.