Ian Buruma

Ian Burumas morföräldrar, Bernard och Winifred Schlesinger, Bun och Win, skrev hela livet till varandra, särskilt under de två världskrigen då de var skilda åt under långa perioder. Under det första var Bernard bårbärare på västfronten, under det andra arméläkare i Indien. Utifrån dessa brev har författaren Ian Buruma, själv född och uppvuxen i Nederländerna, skrivit en ömsint berättelse om sina egna barndomsminnen av en stor och brokig familj i ett annat land, och om två människor som försöker hålla modet uppe under svåra krigsår. Winifred får länge kämpa ensam för att hålla familjen samman, inklusive de tolv judiska barn som räddats från Nazityskland och som familjen Schlesinger har ansvar för. Deras brev är en ovärderlig källa till kunskap om en assimilerad judisk familj med tyska rötter som identifierar sig helt och hållet med hemlandet Storbritannien - ett land som kanske inte helt identifierar sig med dem. Det är en klarsynt och uppfordrande historia om rätten att välja sin egen identitet. Ian Buruma var mellan 2003 och 2017 professor i mänskliga rättigheter och journalistik vid Bard College i New York, och är medarbetare i en rad av världens mest infl ytelserika tidningar, bland dem New York Times, Financial Times och The Guardian. Han har tidigare givit ut bland annat Mordet i Amsterdam, om mordet på filmaren Theo van Gogh, och senast År noll, om den svåra freden efter det svåra kriget 1945. Ian Buruma har nyligen tillträtt som ny chefredaktör för tidskriften New York Review of Books." Mycket välskrivna och underhållande." BTJOriginaltitel: Their Promised Land. Översättning: Emelie André. Omslag: Martin Farran-Lee.

'A captivating mosaic of wartime Berlin' Katja Hoyer, Financial Times 'Brilliant and beautifully written' Anne Applebaum 'Brings to life Berlin during World War II so vividly that you can imagine yourself blithely strolling the streets of the city or hunkering down in the bomb shelters' Barbara Demick 'A rich and fascinating portrait of Berlin at war' Literary Review 'Wonderfully nuanced' Guardian When war broke out in September 1939, what was most striking in the German capital at first was how little changed. Unless you were Jewish. Then life, already hard, soon got unfathomably worse. Drawing on diaries, letters and memoirs, Stay Alive chronicles daily life in wartime Berlin with extraordinary power and immediacy. Here are the movie stars and swing dancers, the resistance circles and SS patrols hunting deserters, the desperate calculations of survival and collaboration. As Allied bombs reduced the city to rubble and Soviet troops closed in, the common greeting of Berliners became not auf Wiedersehen or Heil Hitler but bleiben Sie übrig - 'Stay alive'. Revelatory, devastating and deeply humane, this book illuminates how ordinary people navigated the moral catastrophe of the Third Reich - what it meant to resist, to conform or simply to endure. Buruma shows how a society's accommodation to evil unfolds one compromise at a time, and why understanding this descent remains urgently relevant today.

In 1939, when Ian Buruma's epic opens, Berlin has been under Nazi rule for six years, and its 4.3 million people have made their accommodations to the regime, more or less. When war broke out with Poland in September, what was most striking at first was how little changed. Unless you were Jewish. Then life, already hard, was soon to get unfathomably worse. By 1943, with the German defeat at Stalingrad, ordinary life in Berlin would acquire an increasingly desperate cast. The last three years of the war in Berlin are truly a descent into hell, with a deranged regime in desperate free fall, an increasingly relentless pounding from Allied bombers, and the mounting dread of the approaching Soviet army. The common greeting of Berliners was now not Auf wiedersehen or Heil Hitler but Bleiben Sie übrig -'Stay alive'. And by war's end Berlin's population had fallen by almost half. Among the people trying to stay alive in the city was Ian Buruma's own father, a prisoner conscripted into forced labour in the war economy along with 400,000 other imported workers. Buruma gives due weight to his and their experiences, which give the book a special added dimension. This is a book full of tenderness and genuine heroism, but it is by no means sentimental: again and again we see that most people do not do the hard thing most of the time. Most people go along. It's a lesson that has not lost its timeliness.

In Russian. 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 the Japanese secret police in China, and was mythologized by the Japanese as a heroic combination of Mata Hari and Joan of Arc. Friedrich Weinreb was a Hasidic Jew in Holland who took large amounts of money from fellow Jews in an imaginary scheme to save them from deportation, while in fact betraying some of them to the German secret police. Sentenced after the war as a con artist, he was regarded regarded by supporters as the "Dutch Dreyfus." All three figures have been vilified and mythologized, out of a never-ending need, Ian Buruma argues, to see history, and particularly war, and above all World War II, as a neat story of angels and devils. The Collaborators is a fascinating reconstruction of what in fact we can know about these incredible figures and what will always remain out of reach. What emerges is all the more mesmerizing for being painted in chiaroscuro. In times of life-and-death stakes, the truth quickly gets buried under lies and self-deception. Now, when demagogues abroad and at home are assaulting the truth once more, the stories of the collaborators and their lessons are indispensable.

Ian Buruma explores the life and death of Baruch Spinoza, the Enlightenment thinker whose belief in freedom of thought and speech resonates in our own time A New Yorker “Best Book of 2024” Selection “An elegant, relevant biography of a vital thinker.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Baruch (Benedictus) Spinoza (1632–1677) was a radical free thinker who led a life guided by strong moral principles despite his disbelief in an all-seeing God. Seen by many—Christians as well as Jews—as Satan’s disciple during his lifetime, Spinoza has been regarded as a secular saint since his death. Many contradictory beliefs have been attached to his name: rationalism or metaphysics, atheism or pantheism, liberalism or despotism, Jewishness or anti-Semitism. However, there is no question that he viewed freedom of thought and speech as essential to an open and free society. In this insightful account, the award-winning author Ian Buruma stresses the importance of the time and place that shaped Spinoza, beginning with the Sephardim of Amsterdam and followed by the politics of the Dutch Republic. Though Spinoza rejected the basic assumptions of his family’s faith, and was consequently expelled from his Sephardic community, Buruma argues that Spinoza did indeed lead a Jewish life: a modern Jewish life. To Heine, Hess, Marx, Freud, and no doubt many others today, Spinoza exemplified how to be Jewish without believing in Judaism. His defense of universal freedom is as important for our own time as it was in his.

Ian Buruma explores the life and death of Baruch Spinoza, the Enlightenment thinker whose belief in freedom of thought and speech resonates in our own time A New Yorker “Best Book of 2024” Selection “An elegant, relevant biography of a vital thinker.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Baruch (Benedictus) Spinoza (1632–1677) was a radical free thinker who led a life guided by strong moral principles despite his disbelief in an all-seeing God. Seen by many—Christians as well as Jews—as Satan’s disciple during his lifetime, Spinoza has been regarded as a secular saint since his death. Many contradictory beliefs have been attached to his name: rationalism or metaphysics, atheism or pantheism, liberalism or despotism, Jewishness or anti-Semitism. However, there is no question that he viewed freedom of thought and speech as essential to an open and free society. In this insightful account, the award-winning author Ian Buruma stresses the importance of the time and place that shaped Spinoza, beginning with the Sephardim of Amsterdam and followed by the politics of the Dutch Republic. Though Spinoza rejected the basic assumptions of his family’s faith, and was consequently expelled from his Sephardic community, Buruma argues that Spinoza did indeed lead a Jewish life: a modern Jewish life. To Heine, Hess, Marx, Freud, and no doubt many others today, Spinoza exemplified how to be Jewish without believing in Judaism. His defense of universal freedom is as important for our own time as it was in his.

'A multiple biography with overlapping chronology is a tricky feat and Buruma pulls it off magnificently.' Ben Macintyre, The TimesOn the face of it, the three characters here 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 the Japanese secret police in China, and was mythologized by the Japanese as a heroic combination of Mata Hari and Joan of Arc. Friedrich Weinreb was a Hasidic Jew in Holland who took large amounts of money from fellow Jews in an imaginary scheme to save them from deportation, while in fact betraying some of them to the German secret police. Sentenced after the war as a traitor and a con artist, he is still regarded by supporters as the 'Dutch Dreyfus'. All three figures have been vilified and mythologized, out of a never-ending need, Ian Buruma argues, to see history, and particularly war, and above all World War II, as a neat tale of angels and devils. In telling their often-self-invented stories, The Collaborators offers a fascinating reconstruction of what in fact we can know about these fantasists and what will always remain out of reach. It is also an examination of the power and credibility of history: truth is always a relative concept but perhaps especially so in times of political turmoil, not unlike our own.

Hva er en kollaboratør? Hvem dras mot dobbeltspillet? Hva krever kollaborasjonen av svik, forstillelse, manipulasjon, selvbedrag? Og hva sier den om menneskene rundt - alle dem som møter overløperen med tillit eller mistro, de som gjør ham eller henne til helt eller skurk? Kollaboratørene er en trippelbiografi om tre av andre verdenskrigs mest spektakulære skjebner: Felix Kersten, den finsk-estiske levemannen som ble Himmlers personlige massør og nære fortrolige. Kawahima Yoshiko, den mandsjuriske prinsessen som spionerte for Japan i Kina, og ble mytologisert som en blanding av Mata Hari og Jeanne d'Arc i den japanske propagandaen. Og Friedrich Weinreb, den nederlandske jøden som tjente store penger på å tilby hjelp til desperate jødiske flyktninger - samtidig som han anga dem til det tyske politiet. Etter krigen ble han forsvart av sine tilhengere som «Nederlands Dreyfus». Ian Buruma er kjent for norske lesere som forfatteren av År null og Vekten av skyld - to klassikere i den internasjonale krigslitteraturen. I Kollaboratørene vender Buruma tilbake til problemstillinger som har stått sentralt i forfatterskapet hans: skyld og ansvar, historie og minne, myte og sannhet. Samtidig tar han oss med inn i noen av krigens mest dramatiske og fascinerende fortellinger. Kollaboratørene er et avslørende biografisk mesterstykke - og en meditasjon over krigens myter, gråsoner og skygger.

Vid sidan av Multatulis Max Havelaareller Nederländska Handelskompaniets kaffeauktioner (1860) är den fyrtio år yngre Den tysta kraften av Louis Couperus det stora portalverket och en given referenspunkt inom den rika nederländsk-ostindiska litteraturen. Författaren var på ett första återbesök i landet där han tillbringat sina tidiga tonår. Dofter och ljud slog emot hans öppna sinnen och borgade för en dovt mättad atmosfär när han fattade pennan. Romanen tillkom bokstavligen på ort och ställe: Couperus tillbringade några månader hos sin syster Trudy och svågern Gerard Valette, resident i Pasuruan (förebild till berättelsens Labuwangi) vid Madurasundet på östra Java. Boken utkom några veckor efter författarens återkomst till Holland på våren 1900. Den har tidigare översatts till 16 språk bland annat norska (1916) och finska (1983). Översättning av Per Holmer och med ett efterord av Ian Buruma.

'A multiple biography with overlapping chronology is a tricky feat and Buruma pulls it off magnificently.' Ben Macintyre, The TimesOn the face of it, the three characters here 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 the Japanese secret police in China, and was mythologized by the Japanese as a heroic combination of Mata Hari and Joan of Arc. Friedrich Weinreb was a Hasidic Jew in Holland who took large amounts of money from fellow Jews in an imaginary scheme to save them from deportation, while in fact betraying some of them to the German secret police. Sentenced after the war as a traitor and a con artist, he is still regarded by supporters as the 'Dutch Dreyfus'. All three figures have been vilified and mythologized, out of a never-ending need, Ian Buruma argues, to see history, and particularly war, and above all World War II, as a neat tale of angels and devils. In telling their often-self-invented stories, The Collaborators offers a fascinating reconstruction of what in fact we can know about these fantasists and what will always remain out of reach. It is also an examination of the power and credibility of history: truth is always a relative concept but perhaps especially so in times of political turmoil, not unlike our own.

'Rich and rewarding' Wall Street JournalIt is impossible to understand the last 75 years of British and American history without understanding the Anglo-American relationship, and specifically the bonds between presidents and prime ministers. FDR of course had Churchill; JFK famously had Macmillan, his consigliere during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Reagan found his ideological soul mate in Thatcher, and George W. Bush found his fellow believer, in religion and in war, in Tony Blair. In a series of shrewd and absorbing character studies, Ian Buruma takes the reader on a journey through the special relationship via the fateful bonds between president and prime minister. It's never been a relationship of equals: from Churchill's desperate cajoling and conniving to keep FDR on side, British prime ministers have put much more stock in the relationship than their US counterparts did. For Britain, resigned to the loss of its once-great empire, its close kinship to the world's greatest superpower would give it continued relevance, and serve as leverage to keep continental Europe in its place. As Buruma shows, this was almost always fool's gold. And now, as the links between the Brexit vote and the 2016 US election are coming into sharper focus, it is impossible to understand the populist uprising in either country without reference to Trump and Boris Johnson, though ironically, they are also the key, Buruma argues, to understanding the special relationship's demise.

It is impossible to understand the last 75 years of British and American history without understanding the Anglo-American relationship, and specifically the bonds between presidents and prime ministers. FDR of course had Churchill; JFK famously had Macmillan, his consigliere during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Reagan found his ideological soul mate in Thatcher, and George W. Bush found his fellow believer, in religion and in war, in Tony Blair. In a series of shrewd and absorbing character studies, Ian Buruma takes the reader on a journey through the special relationship via the fateful bonds between president and prime minister. It's never been a relationship of equals: from Churchill's desperate cajoling and conniving to keep FDR on side, British prime ministers have put much more stock in the relationship than their US counterparts did. For Britain, resigned to the loss of its once-great empire, its close kinship to the world's greatest superpower would give it continued relevance, and serve as leverage to keep continental Europe in its place. As Buruma shows, this was almost always fool's gold. And now, as the links between the Brexit vote and the 2016 US election are coming into sharper focus, it is impossible to understand the populist uprising in either country without reference to Trump and Boris Johnson, though ironically, they are also the key, Buruma argues, to understanding the special relationship's demise.

'The whole thing sparks astonishingly to life' ObserverWhen Ian Buruma arrived in Tokyo as a young film student in 1975, he found a feverish and surreal metropolis in the midst of an economic boom, where everything seemed new and history only remained in fragments. Through his adventures in the world of avant-garde theatre, his encounters with carnival acts, fashion photographers and moments on-set with Akira Kurosawa, Buruma came of age. For an outsider, unattached to the cultural burdens placed on the Japanese, this was a place to be truly free. A Tokyo Romance is a portrait of a young artist and the fantastical city that shaped him, and a timeless story about the desire to transgress boundaries: cultural, artistic and sexual.

A classic memoir of self-invention in a strange land: Ian Buruma's unflinching account of his amazing journey into the heart of Tokyo's underground culture as a young man in the 1970's When Ian Buruma arrived in Tokyo in 1975, Japan was little more than an idea in his mind, a fantasy of a distant land. A sensitive misfit in the world of his upper middleclass youth, what he longed for wasn't so much the exotic as the raw, unfiltered humanity he had experienced in Japanese theater performances and films, witnessed in Amsterdam and Paris. One particular theater troupe, directed by a poet of runaways, outsiders, and eccentrics, was especially alluring, more than a little frightening, and completely unforgettable. If Tokyo was anything like his plays, Buruma knew that he had to join the circus as soon as possible. Tokyo was an astonishment. Buruma found a feverish and surreal metropolis where nothing was understated--neon lights, crimson lanterns, Japanese pop, advertising jingles, and cabarets. He encountered a city in the midst of an economic boom where everything seemed new, aside from the isolated temple or shrine that had survived the firestorms and earthquakes that had levelled the city during the past century. History remained in fragments: the shapes of wounded World War II veterans in white kimonos, murky old bars that Mishima had cruised in, and the narrow alleys where street girls had once flitted. Buruma's Tokyo, though, was a city engaged in a radical transformation. And through his adventures in the world of avant garde theater, his encounters with carnival acts, fashion photographers, and moments on-set with Akira Kurosawa, Buruma underwent a radical transformation of his own. For an outsider, unattached to the cultural burdens placed on the Japanese, this was a place to be truly free. A Tokyo Romance is a portrait of a young artist and the fantastical city that shaped him. With his signature acuity, Ian Buruma brilliantly captures the historical tensions between east and west, the cultural excitement of 1970s Tokyo, and the dilemma of the gaijin in Japanese society, free, yet always on the outside. The result is a timeless story about the desire to transgress boundaries: cultural, artistic, and sexual.

Buruma reiser til begge land, til Berlin og Tokyo, Hiroshima og Auschwitz. Her møter han dem som både er bemerkelsesverdig ærlige om fortiden og dem som mener at det å ta ansvar er en for stor byrde. Noen vil bare glemme alt, mens andre vil bruke erfaringene etter krigen til å advare og arbeide for at noe lignende aldri mer må skje. Buruma undersøker disse ulike måtene å forholde seg til krigen på, og hvordan de to landene på svært forskjellig vis har forholdt seg til fortidens grusomheter. De har ført til ulike politiske bevegelser, ulik politikk, litteratur og kunst. Nå, mer enn sytti år etter krigens slutt, mener han at Tyskland for det meste har klart å forsone seg med sin mørke fortid, mens Japan fortsatt er sterkt preget av historiske hendelser som for lengst burde vært håndtert. Boka er en svært ærlig, men samtidig ømfintlig beskrivelse av hvordan noen mennesker tar ansvar og noen forsøker å unnslippe vekten av skyld.

Ian Buruma's maternal grandparents, Bernard and Winifred (Bun & Win), wrote to each other regularly throughout their life together. The first letters were written in 1915, when Bun was still at school at Uppingham and Win was taking music lessons in Hampstead. They were married for more than sixty years, but the heart of their remarkable story lies within the span of the two world wars. After a brief separation, when Bernard served as a stretcher bearer on the Western Front during the Great War, the couple exchanged letters whenever they were apart. Most of them were written during the Second World War and their correspondence is filled with vivid accounts of wartime activity at home and abroad. Bernard was stationed in India as an army doctor, while Win struggled through wartime privation and the Blitz to hold her family together, including their eldest son, the later film director John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, Sunday Bloody Sunday), and twelve Jewish children they had arranged to be rescued from Nazi Germany. Their letters are a priceless record of an assimilated Jewish family living in England throughout the upheavals of the twentieth century and a moving portrait of a loving couple separated by war. By using their own words, Ian Buruma has created a spellbinding homage to the sustaining power of a family's love and devotion through very dark days

A family history of surpassing beauty and power: Ian Buruma's account of his grandparents' enduring love through the terror and separation of two world wars During the almost six years England was at war with Nazi Germany, Winifred and Bernard Schlesinger, Ian Buruma's grandparents, and the film director John Schlesinger's parents, were, like so many others, thoroughly sundered from each other. Their only recourse was to write letters back and forth. And write they did, often every day. In a way they were just picking up where they left off in 1918, at the end of their first long separation because of the Great War that swept Bernard away to some of Europe's bloodiest battlefields. The thousands of letters between them were part of an inheritance that ultimately came into the hands of their grandson, Ian Buruma. Now, in a labor of love that is also a powerful act of artistic creation, Ian Buruma has woven his own voice in with theirs to provide the context and counterpoint necessary to bring to life, not just a remarkable marriage, but a class, and an age. Winifred and Bernard inherited the high European cultural ideals and attitudes that came of being born into prosperous German-Jewish migr families. To young Ian, who would visit from Holland every Christmas, they seemed the very essence of England, their spacious Berkshire estate the model of genteel English country life at its most pleasant and refined. It wasn't until years later that he discovered how much more there was to the story. At its heart, Their Promised Land is the story of cultural assimilation. The Schlesingers were very British in the way their relatives in Germany were very German, until Hitler destroyed that option. The problems of being Jewish and facing anti-Semitism even in the country they loved were met with a kind of stoic discretion. But they showed solidarity when it mattered most. As the shadows of war lengthened again, the Schlesingers mounted a remarkable effort, which Ian Buruma describes movingly, to rescue twelve Jewish children from the Nazis and see to their upkeep in England. Many are the books that do bad marriages justice; precious few books take readers inside a good marriage. In Their Promised Land, Buruma has done just that; introducing us to a couple whose love was sustaining through the darkest hours of the century. Look for Ian's new book, A Tokyo Romance, in March, 2018.

Alle snakker om fredsvåren. Vi glemmer at en verden i ruiner møtte menneskene våren 1945. Enorme fysiske ødeleggelser preget store deler av Europa, Asia og Nord-Afrika. Titalls millioner mennesker var døde eller skadede. Hatet mot okkupantmakten, krigsforbrytere og overløpere skulle få utløp - samtidig som lov og rett og sivilisasjon mange steder måtte gjenoppbygges fra grunnen. Folk sultet og var syke, svartebørsen blomstret, millioner kom hjem fra slagmarken, konsentrasjonsleirenes redsler ble avdekket, flyktninger i hundretusenvis var på vandring. Samtidig var 1945 en tid for optimisme og gjenoppbygging, for fremtidsvisjoner og fredstanker. For dem som skulle starte på nytt, var utfallet likevel uvisst: Hva slags liv ventet dem? Hva ville vinne frem - fremskritt og fellesskap eller kaos og destruksjon? Ian Buruma er en av verdens mest kjente historikere i dag, og en anerkjent essayist, romanforfatter og kritiker. På bakgrunn av vanlige folks fortellinger verden over har han skrevet en stort anlagt beretning om året da verden ble født på ny. Det er en begivenhet når Burumas gripende storverk nå utkommer på norsk, 70 år etter fredsvåren.

Many books have been written, and continue to be written, about the Second World War: military histories, histories of the Holocaust, the war in Asia, or collaboration and resistance in Europe. Few books have taken a close look at the immediate aftermath of the worldwide catastrophe. Drawing on hundreds of eye-witness accounts and personal stories, this sweeping book examines the seven months (in Europe) and four months (in Asia) that followed the surrender of the Axis powers, from the fate of Holocaust survivors liberated from the concentration camps, and the formation of the state of Israel, to the incipient civil war in China, and the allied occupation of Japan. It was a time when terrible revenge was taken on collaborators and their former masters; of ubiquitous black markets, war crime tribunals; and the servicing of millions of occupation troops, former foes in some places, liberators in others. But Year Zero is not just a story of vengeance. It was also a new beginning, of democratic restorations in Japan and West Germany, of social democracy in Britain and of a new world order under the United Nations. If construction follows destruction, Year Zero describes that extraordinary moment in between, when people faced the wreckage, full of despair, as well as great hope. An old world had been destroyed; a new one was yet to be built.