Post by pieter on Aug 28, 2017 9:07:58 GMT -7
Ian Buruma
Ian Buruma (born December 28, 1951) is a Dutch writer, editor and historian who lives and works in the United States. In May 2017, he was named editor of The New York Review of Books, where he is scheduled to take charge in September 2017.
Much of his writing has focused on the culture of Asia, particularly that of China and 20th-century Japan. He was the Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College from 2003 to 2017.
Life and career
Buruma was born and reared in The Hague, Netherlands, to a Dutch father and British mother. He studied Chinese literature and history at Leiden University, and then Japanese film at Nihon University in Tokyo, Japan. His wife is the Japanese historian Hotta Eri.
He lived in Japan from 1975 to 1981, where he worked as a film reviewer, photographer and documentary filmmaker. During the 1980s, he edited the cultural section of the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong. He later traveled throughout Asia working as a freelance writer. Buruma is a board member of Human Rights in China and a fellow of the European Council of Foreign Relations. Buruma has contributed numerous articles to The New York Review of Books since 1985. He held fellowships at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin (1991) and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. (1999), and he is a fellow of St Antony's College in Oxford, UK. In 2000 he delivered the Huizinga Lecture (on "Neoromanticism of writers in exile") in the Pieterskerk in Leiden, Netherlands.
From 2003 to 2017 Buruma was Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights & Journalism at Bard College, New York. In May 2017, he was named editor of The New York Review of Books, where he is scheduled to take over as editor in September 2017. as successor to founding editor Robert B. Silvers, who held the position until his death in March of 2017. He has won several prizes for his books, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for Theater of Cruelty. He has held a number of editorial and academic positions and has been termed a "well-regarded European intellectual".
Buruma is a nephew of the English film director John Schlesinger, with whom he published a series of interviews in book form.
John Richard Schlesinger, CBE (/ˈʃlɛsɪndʒər/; 16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003) was an English film and stage director, and actor. He won an Academy Award for Best Director for Midnight Cowboy, and was nominated for two other films (Darling and Sunday Bloody Sunday).