Ian will be out and about throughout this year on the literary festival scene including Edinburgh - this weekend! - and Dartington. His talk with John Lanchester at the Voicebox at the Royal Festival Hall on Wed 10 July was a hugesuccess.. On publication he gave a talk at Trinity College in Dublin - more details to follow. Confirmed interviews include Nightwaves on BBC Radio 3 on May 13. Ian is travelling a lot at the moment and so we are setting a press date for reviews - of which there will be many - of 16 May. The latest news isthat we've sold serial to the Guardian, a 3, 200 word extract on Tiananmen, which ran on 11 May and an interview appeared in the Irish Times on 8 June. Review are expected in every national newspaper, and high praise is starting to come in: In Bad Elements, Ian Buruma dissects the Chinese dissident community at home and abroad with sympathy yet sobriety. Literary Review China ison the move, Ian Buruma is a leading writer on Asia, and his is an importantbook. In his hands a civilisation too often seen as an enigma and an abstraction comes to life... Buruma has written a pungent book about the lack of democracy in Asia. George Walden, Sunday Telegraph The tales of courage, sacrifice and integrity in Buruma's book are inspiring. Sunday Times This wise and imaginative work - at once so sympathetic and so critically alert - could scarcely have been attempted by anyone but Buruma. It is the fruit of dedicated travel and research, and above all of a mind too stringent to be misled - even by its own hopes. Colin Thuberon, Spectator Bad Elements is a judicious, sparklingly readable book... Ian Buruma has a well-nigh unrivalled inside knowledge of Asia. Terry Eagleton, Irish Times '...what is most fascinating is Buruma's attempt to go beyond describing China as an abstraction and his success in bringing it alive as a society of individuals, with peculiar personal histories.'Chris Patten, Times '...an...intelligent read...Much of the originality of Buruma's book lies in his engagement with Chinese dissidence, not just in what used to be called 'mainland China', but in the many other Chinas that exist today - in the city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore, and in Taiwan and California.'New Statesman After five years of research, taking him among the exiled Chinese communities of Singapore, Taiwan and the US, Buruma has turned in a hybrid melange of scholarly analysis, reportage and, at times, travelogue. The Scotman Combining reportage and historical analysis, Bad Elements is a meditation on these very questions, on the past, present, andfuture of Chinese democracy, by a distinguished and highly reflective comment
