John Harper was a spy, or something similar, until a misjudgement prompted his shadowy employers to exile him to a jungle hut in a quiet Balinese backwater, away from the volatile 1998 riots in Jakarta.While in exile, Harper reflects on his past and the events that led him to the present.

Born in a Japanese prison camp in Indonesia in 1942, he returned to his mother’s native Holland. Apart from a few happy years in America before a terrible tragedy, Harper has lived as a displaced person, neither white nor Asian. Then he joins the organisation, which protects the interests of large corporations in unstable countries, and is posted to Indonesia in the turbulent 1960s; he thinks he has found his place. But several poor judgement calls and the anti-communist purge of 1965-66 that saw up to a million people murdered across Indonesia lead him to be displaced once again.

Back in the present, Harper meets a woman and begins to wonder if he can finally find peace. But he sees shadows and danger at every turn.

Black Water is a tragedy about a man who never figures out where he stands in a treacherous world. Sadly, however, it’s such an internalised, slow-moving narrative that it’s hard to care about Harper’s fate. Black Water is very well written, but it’s heavy going – a bit like swimming through the black water of the title.

Reviewed by Tessa Chudy