Ian Buruma has been one of my favorite Asian critics for a while, so I was looking forward to reading his latest book, Occidentalism, which was co-written by Avishai Margalit. And as usual, it is filled with well-researched arguments and clear representations of his critical thought. Although this slim book (149 pages of text) comes off as an extended essay, which isn’t really a detraction. However, the book could have been expanded. I imagine it might have been rushed through given its timely premise; to explain anti-Western ideas-as in “Why they hate us”. Buruma and Margalit trace back two hundred years anti-Western thought from nineteenth-century Germany and Russia to twentieth-century Japan, China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. The breath and scope of the references is impressive-a sort of history of ideas really (Enlightenment, Romanticism, Capitalism, imperialism, Marxism, nihilism, fascism, and Manichaeism,). I can see where Buruma draws on his expertise of Japanese and Chinese history and culture, which are among the strongest sources in the book, and why he brought in Margalit to flesh out the Middle Eastern references and arguments.
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