45 THE WORLD AT THE TURNING POINT
Ian Buruma
Born in The Hague in 1951, he teaches as Paul W. Williams Professor at Bard College and lives in New York. He has published in numerous American and European journals. Most recently published by Hanser: Okzidentalismus. Der Westen in den Augen seiner Feinde (with A. Margalit, 2005), Die Grenzen der Toleranz. The Murder of Theo van Gogh (2007).
The end of the Second World War marked the last global caesura, the end and the beginning, which are broken down into countless individual images and stories. The Dutch-American historian Ian Buruma has brought together hundreds of personal memories and reports from Europe and Asia to create a great history of the world at zero hour. He tells of enemies who became liberators, flourishing black markets, military tribunals and lynch law, of victors and vanquished, of grief, fear and boundless joy. Never before has there been such a vivid and polyphonic account of the dramatic summer of 1945, which laid the foundations for our present day.
After Ian Buruma's lecture, Philipp Blom, historian, journalist and curator of the BKF event series The End of the Enlightenment, will talk to the author.
The book Ian Burumas ’45: The world at a turning point (German translation: Barbara Schaden) is published by Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich; 432 pages. Hardback.
The event will be held in English at the
WIEN MUSEUM, Karlsplatz 8, 1040 Vienna
instead.