Byl to demonstrativní zločin. Jednoho listopadového dne zavraždil mladý rozhněvaný muslim výstřelem z pistole holandského filmového režiséra Theo van Gogha za to, že se spolu s černou imigrantkou a političkou Aján Hirsi Aliovou odvážil natočit ostrý prtiislámský snímek promítnutý v nizozemské televizi. Zavraždění známého kulturního provokatéra z ideově-náboženských důvodů rukou marockého přistěhovalce otřásla poklidným a tradičně tolerantním Holandskem a vyvolala vlnu hněvivých protestů po celém světě. Ian Buruma, profesor americké...

Novinář a profesor na Bard University Ian Buruma (Vražda v Amsterodamu) přispívá v této knize do diskuse o místu organizovaného náboženství ve veřejné sféře politickými a kulturními analýzami ze Spojených států, Evropy a Asie. Zkoumá dějiny vztahů církve a státu v USA a Evropě, úlohu náboženství v politice Číny a Japonska a rostoucí vliv islámu v současné Evropě a pokouší se rozřešit, jak byla v různých kulturách demokracie tímto napětím (mezi náboženskou a světskou autoritou) zasažena. V jednom ze svých provokativních výzkumů se...

For 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...

Why are Germans so well informed on World War II and guilty whilst most Japanese know almost nothing about it? Why do so many Australians feel so virtuous about it? Ian Buruma explores the causes of these varied attitudes.

The received myth is that the Japanese are a race so different from the rest of us that no outsider can understand them. Ian Buruma explodes that view with a studied analysis of the way the Japanese perceive and portray themselves in popular culture.

Ian Buruma examines the seven months (in Europe) and four months (in Asia) that followed 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. 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.

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...

'The whole thing sparks astonishingly to life' Observer When 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...