The Missionary and the Libertine Love and War in East and West [Paperback]

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 Libertineshows us why Buruma’s reputation for writing the most compelling commentary on the faultlines of the East-West divide is so secure.“Trenchant and sophisticated…. Buruma evokes a rich panorama of East and West.”–The New York Times

“Eclectic and intimate.”–Talk

“Buruma has dizzying freewheeling powers of observation.”–Los Angeles TimesThe author of five previous books, Ian Buruma lives in London.The Missionary and the Libertine
I first saw the East in 1971. The East is of course a vague notion, for it is imaginary as much as geographical or historical. I am concerned here with the imaginary East. In 1971 a Japanese theater group called the Tenjo Sajiki came to Amsterdam, where I was living at the time. The group was led by the writer/director Terayama Shuji. He had hawkish eyes and short-cropped hair, brushed forward like Napoleon's, and he wore high-heeled ladies' slippers. The Tenjo Sajiki was playing at the Mickery Theater.
Groups from all over the world performed at the Mickery. Located in the center of Amsterdam, on a wide street that had once been a canal, the Mickery had become the headquarters of the international aval"