Ian Buruma

Ian Buruma examines the seven months (in Europe) and four months (in Asia) that followed surrender of the Axis powers, from the fate of Holocaust survivors liberated from the concetration camps, and the formation of the state of Israel, to the incipient civil war in China, and the allied occupation of Japan. If construction follows destruction, 'Year Zero' describes that extraordinary moment in between, when people faced the wreckage, full of despair,...

On the face of it, Felix Kersten, Kawashima Yoshiko, Friedrich Weinreb, seem to have little in common - aside from the fact that each committed wartime acts that led some to see them as national heroes, and others as villains. All three were mythmakers, larger-than-life storytellers, for whom the truth was beside the point. All three figures have been vilified and mythologised, out of a never-ending need, Ian Buruma argues, to see history, and particularly...