In Indonesia in 1965–6 half a million communists and supposed communist sympathisers were murdered by a range of civilian and paramilitary organisations under the direction of the army.
This is the setting for Louise Doughty’s grim, ambitious novel. John Harper is a young operative in Jakarta, working for a Dutch private intelligence operation, providing information for corporations and doing covert work for various governments, chiefly the American. The title refers to the polluted water of Jakarta’s canals, but also to the water of the country’s paddy fields. To the news-attentive reader there is also the echo of the Blackwater private security operation that got into trouble in Iraq. Most of all, perhaps, it refers to the rain that disguises the approach of death, blocking out sound and traces of movement.
During the massacres Harper commits an act of which he is deeply ashamed.
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