Ian Buruma

Why religion must be separated from politics if democracy is to thrive around the worldFor eight years the president of the United States was a born-again Christian, backed by well-organized evangelicals who often seemed intent on erasing the church-state divide. In Europe, the increasing number of radicalized Muslims is creating widespread fear that Islam is undermining Western-style liberal democracy. And even in polytheistic Asia, the development of democracy has been hindered in some countries, particularly China, by a long history in which religion was tightly linked to the state. Ian Buruma is the first writer to provide a sharp-eyed look at the tensions between religion and politics on three continents. Drawing on many contemporary and historical examples, he argues that the violent passions inspired by religion must be tamed in order to make democracy work. Comparing the United States and Europe, Buruma asks why so many Americans—and so few Europeans—see religion as a help to democracy. Turning to China and Japan, he disputes the notion that only monotheistic religions pose problems for secular politics. Finally, he reconsiders the story of radical Islam in contemporary Europe, from the case of Salman Rushdie to the murder of Theo van Gogh. Sparing no one, Buruma exposes the follies of the current culture war between defenders of "Western values" and "multiculturalists," and explains that the creation of a democratic European Islam is not only possible, but necessary. Presenting a challenge to dogmatic believers and dogmatic secularists alike, Taming the Gods powerfully argues that religion and democracy can be compatible—but only if religious and secular authorities are kept firmly apart.

In this scintillating book, Ian Buruma peels away the myths that surround Japanese culture. With piercing analysis of cinema, theatre, television, art and legend, he shows the Japanese both 'as they imagine themselves to be, and as they would like themselves to be.'A Japanese Mirror examines samurai and gangsters, transvestites and goddesses to paint an eloquent picture of life in Japan. This is a country long shrouded in enigma and in his compelling book, Buruma reveals a culture rich in with poetry, beauty and wonder.

With its distinctive history of civil liberties and the delicate balance between social order and the free pursuit of self-interest, England has always fascinated its continental neighbours. Buruma examines the history of ideas of Englishness and what Europeans have admired (or loathed) in England across the centuries. Voltaire wondered why British laws could not be transplanted into France, or even to Serbia; Karl Marx thought the English were too stupid to start a revolution; Goethe worshipped Shakespeare; and the Kaiser was convinced that Britain was run by Jews. Combining the stories of European Anglophiles and Anglophobes with memories of his own Anglo-Dutch-German-Jewish family, this utterly original book illuminates the relationship between Britain and Europe, revealing how Englishness - and others' views of it - have shaped modern European history.

In this highly original and now classic text, Ian Buruma explores and compares how Germany and Japan have attempted to come to terms with their violent pasts, and investigates the painful realities of living with guilt, and with its denial. As Buruma travels through both countries, he encounters people whose honesty in confronting their past is strikingly brave, and others who astonish by the ingenuity of their evasions of responsibility. In Auschwitz, Berlin, Hiroshima and Tokyo he explores the contradictory attitudes of scholars, politicians and survivors towards World War II and visits the contrasting monuments that commemorate the atrocities of the war. Buruma allows these opposing voices to reveal how an obsession with the past, especially distorted versions of it, continually causes us to question who should indeed pay the wages of guilt.

From Shanghai before and during the Second World War to U. S. occupied Tokyo, and, finally, to the Middle East in the early 1970s, Ian Buruma's masterful novel about the intoxicating power of collective fantasy follows three star-struck men driven to extraordinary acts by their devotion to the same legendary woman. A beautiful Japanese girl born in Manchuria, Yamaguchi Yoshiko is known as Ri Koran in Japan, Li Xianglan in China, and Shirley Yamaguchi in the U. S., and her past is a closely guarded secret. In Buruma's reimagining of the life of Yamaguchi Yoshiko, a Japanese girl torn between patriotism for her parents? homeland, worldly ambition, and sympathy for the Chinese, she will reflect almost exactly the twists and turns in the history of modern Japan. The China Lover is both luminously written and imbued with the insights and erudition that have made Ian Buruma one of the most respected writers on modern Asia.

When Sidney Vanoven is sent to occupied Japan, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, it is his dream posting. By day, he works in the censor's office watching Japanese films; at night he immerses himself in the sensual pleasures of Tokyo. His job leads him into the circle of the beautiful film star Shirley Yamaguchi, a passionate and indomitable woman, whose wartime secrets hint at deception and betrayal. As he learns more of her story it seems to echo Japan's own dark secret. In The China Lover, Ian Buruma has created an exhilarating saga of war-torn Japan that is epic in scale, richly imagined and vividly populated. It is quite simply unforgettable.

Who speaks for China? Is it the old men of the politburo or activists like Wei Jingshsheng, who spent eighteen years in prison for writing a emocratic manifesto? Is China's future to be fund amid the boisterous sleaze of an electoral cmpaign in Taiwan, or in the manoeuvres by which ordinary residents of Beijing quietly resist the authority of the state? These are among the questions that Ian Buruma poses in this enlightening and often moving tour of Chinese dissidence. Travelling through the U. S., Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the People's Republic, Ian Buruma tells the stories of Chinese rebels who dare to stand up to their rulers, exploring their chances of success in the face of the most powerful dictatorship on earth. From the exiles of Tiananmen to the hidden Christians of rural China, he brings alive the human dimension to their struggles and reveals the world's most secretive superpower through the eyes of its dissidents.

En kall novemberdag i Amsterdam 2004 cyklade den hyllade och kontroversielle Filmaren Theo van Gogh till jobbet. Han kom aldrig fram. Han mördades av en fanatisk ung muslim, Mohammed Bouyeri, som hade provocerats av en film van Gogh gjort med islammotståndaren Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Mordet chockade världen och det tysta, självbelåtna och välmående Nederländerna – ett land som anser sig vara toleransens hemort. Kort därefter reste författaren Ian Buruma från USA till sitt hemland för att försöka sätta in historien i ett sammanhang. Resultatet blev Mordet i Amsterdam, driven som en deckare och med den intellektuella skärpa man kan förvänta sig av en av vår tids mest respekterade journalister. 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 inflytelserika tidningar, bland dem New York Times, Financial Times och The Guardian.

Traces the murder of the controversial Dutch filmmaker and great-grandnephew of Vincent van Gogh by an angry Muslim immigrant's son who promptly committed ritual suicide, describing how the event sent shock waves throughout Europe and tested the boundaries of the secular West's tolerance of other cultures. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.

It was an emblematic crime: on a November day in Amsterdam, an angry young Muslim man shot and killed the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, iconic European provocateur, for making a movie with the anti-Islam politician Ayaan Hersi Ali. After shooting van Gogh, Mohammed Bouyeri calmly stood over the body and cut his throat with a curved machete. The murder horrified quiet, complacent Holland - a country that prides itself on being a bastion of tolerance - and sent shock waves around the world. In Murder in Amsterdam, Ian Buruma describes what he found when he returned to his native country to try and make sense of van Gogh's death. The result is Buruma's masterpiece: a brave and rigorous study of conflict in our time, with the intimacy and control of a true-crime page-turner.

Provides a thought-provoking analysis of the stereotypes and misunderstandings about the Western world that ignite anti-Western political movements, tracing the roots and evolution of such phenomena and examining why they have found a ready host in the Islamic world. Reprint.

The author of Bad Elements and The Missionary and the Libertine traces the history of Japan from the country's nineteenth-century feudal isolation, to its rise to military power and defeat during World War II, to its rebirth as a global economic power and working democracy in the postwar era. Reprint.

An intriguing study of China as seen from the perspective of its dissidents profiles these opponents of the country's official policies, reporting on exiles in California, religious dissidents in Beijing, the clash between cultural traditions and contemporary politics, the role of Taiwan, the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, and more. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

From Naipaul's India to the last days of Hong Kong, and from the ghosts of Pearl Harbor to Benazir Bhutto, Buruma delivers an engaging and incisive look at the ways East and West understand-and misunderstand-each other. At home in both worlds, Buruma traverses the realms of journalism, literary criticism, and political analysis, to examine the dialogue of fact and fantasy that affects our perception of far-away lands. Whether deconstructing the films of Satyajit Ray or the novels of Yoshimoto Banana, Buruma offers a splendid counterbalance to fashionable theories of clashing civilizations and uniquely Asian values. In twenty-five illuminating, often humorous essays, The Missionary and the Libertine shows us why Buruma's reputation for writing the most compelling commentary on the faultlines of the East-West divide is so secure.

"Imaginative, original--wittily written."--The Washington Post Book World To some, England has long represented tolerance, reason, and political moderation. To others, it is a moribund bastion of snobbery and outdated tradition. In this lively and diverting social history, noted author Ian Buruma, himself the son of Dutch immigrants to England, provides an incisive look at anglophilia--and anglophobia--over the last two centuries. From passionate enthusiasts like Voltaire and Goethe, to exiles like Garibaldi and Herzen, to colorful England-bashers like Napoleon, Marx, and Kaiser Wilhelm II, Anglomania gives a sharply satirical account of Europe's sometimes comical, sometimes deadly prejudices, and explains why England's individuality and her relationship with Europe is still vitally important as we enter the twenty-first century.

Buruma's prismatic, fascinating first novel is a portrait of Ranji, the cricket player who was "not simply the greatest cricketer of all time, but a fairy tale prince . . . so famous that children sang songs about him, and grown men wept when they saw him play." Buruma weaves the adventures of an unnamed narrator together with a (fictional) undiscovered memoir of Ranji to create a witty and reverbatory meditation on England, India and the post-colonial sense of self.