Book Log 2020 #17: Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

When their parents have to go to Singapore for unexplained reasons at the end of World War II, a brother and sister wind up in the care of the family's lodger, who introduces the pair to his eccentric band of friends (and coworkers? fellow smugglers? criminals of some type?), all of whom seemed to have some ill-defined role in the war effort. The siblings are given a sort of practical education and helped to find work. The brother becomes convinced that their mother is still in Britain - perhaps even in London - and after more than a year of absence he sees her again, briefly, before being sent off to boarding school in the US.

Jump ahead a dozen years, and the brother is working for the Foreign Office in an intelligence capacity, and he uses that position to try to learn more about the work his mother (and the people who take care of him when she left) did during the war.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, both as a mystery about what all of the adults were doing during the war and as an examination of how the past can shape your present. Very much recommended.