Ian Buruma (born 28 December 1951) is a Dutch writer and editor who lives and works in the United States. In 2017, he became editor of The New York Review of Books, but left the position in September 2018.

Much of his writing has focused on the culture of Asia, particularly that of China and 20th-century Japan. He was the Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College from 2003 to 2017.^[1]

Buruma was born and raised in The Hague, Netherlands. His father, Sytze Leonard "Leo" Buruma, was a Dutch lawyer and the son of a Mennonite minister, and his mother, Gwendolyn Margaret "Wendy" Schlesinger, a Briton of German-Jewish descent.^[2][3][4] He went to study at Leiden University in 1971, and obtained a Candidate degree in Chinese literature and History in 1975. He subsequently pursued postgraduate studies in Japanese cinema from 1975 to 1977 at the College of Art (Nichidai Geijutsu Gakko) of the Nihon University (Tokyo, Japan).

In 2004, Buruma was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (Dr.h.c.) in Theology from the University of Groningen.

In 2008, Buruma was awarded the Erasmus Prize, which is awarded to an individual who has made "an especially important contribution to culture, society or social science in Europe".^[21] He was included in Foreign Policy magazine's 2010 list of the "100 top global thinkers".^[22]

Buruma has won several prizes for his books, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for Theater of Cruelty.^[8]

Buruma has been married twice. He and his first wife, Sumie Tani, had a daughter, as did he and his second wife, Eri Hotta.^[23][24] Buruma is a nephew of the English film director John Schlesinger, with whom he published a series of interviews in book form.^[25]

He argued in 2001 for wholehearted British participation in the European Union because they were the "strongest champions in Europe of a liberal approach to commerce and politics".^[26]

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (May 2018)

• Richie, Donald & Ian Buruma (1980). The Japanese Tattoo. Weatherhill.
• Buruma, Ian (1983). Behind the Mask: On Sexual Demons, Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters, Drifters, and Other Japanese Cultural Heroes. New American Library.
• A Japanese Mirror: Heroes and Villains of Japanese Culture. London: Jonathan Cape. 1984. ISBN 978-0-224-02049-7.
• Tokyo: Form and Spirit (1986) with James Brandon, Kenneth Frampton, Martin Friedman, Donald Richie ISBN 978-0-8109-1690-6
• God's Dust: A Modern Asian Journey (1989) ISBN 978-0-7538-1089-7
• Great Cities of the World: Hong Kong (1991)
• Playing the Game (1991) novel ISBN 978-0-374-52633-7
• The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and in Japan (1994) ISBN 978-0-452-01156-4
• Introduction for Geisha: The Life, the Voices, the Art (1998) by Jodi Cobb ISBN 978-0-375-70180-1
• Voltaire's Coconuts, or Anglomania in Europe (UK title) (1998) ISBN 978-0-7538-0954-9 or Anglomania: A European Love Affair (US title) (1998) ISBN 978-0-375-50206-4
• The Pilgrimage from Tiananmen Square, The New York Times (1999)
• The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West (2000) compilation ISBN 978-0-571-21414-3
• De neo-romantiek van schrijvers in exil ("Neoromanticism of writers in exile") (2000) ISBN 978-90-446-0028-5
• Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing (2001) ISBN 978-0-679-78136-3
• Inventing Japan: From Empire to Economic Miracle 1853–1964 (2003) ISBN 978-0-679-64085-1
• Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (2004) with Avishai Margalit ISBN 978-0-14-303487-2
• Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (2006) ISBN 978-1-59420-108-0 winner of The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for the Best Current Interest Book.
• Conversations with John Schlesinger (2006) ISBN 978-0-375-75763-1
• Commentary on the History of China for the time period of The Last Emperor, The Criterion Collection 2008 DVDs (ASIN: B000ZM1MIW, ISBN 978-1-60465-014-3).
• The China Lover (2008) novel ISBN 978-1-59420-194-3
• China's class ceiling, published in the Los Angeles Times
• Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents (2010) ISBN 978-0-691-13489-5, with some historical examples of the value the separation of religion and national governance with the separation of church and state as one example.
• Grenzen aan de vrijheid: van De Sade tot Wilders (Limits to Freedom: From De Sade to Wilders) (2010) ISBN 978-90-477-0262-7 – Essay for the Month of Philosophy in the Netherlands.
• Year Zero: A History of 1945. New York, NY: The Penguin Press. 2013. ISBN 978-1-59420-436-4.
• "The Man Who Got It Right", The New York Review of Books (2013)
• Theater of Cruelty: Art, Film, and the Shadows of War (2014) ISBN 978-1-59017-777-8
• — (July 20, 2015). "The Sensualist: What Makes 'The Tale of Genji' So Seductive". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. Vol. 91, no. 20. pp. 64–71.^{[lower-alpha 1]}
• Their Promised Land: My Grandparents in Love and War (2016)
• — (June 19, 2017). "Dance with the Dragon: Are the United States and China on a Collision Course?". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. Vol. 93, no. 17. pp. 61–66.^{[lower-alpha 2]}
• A Tokyo Romance. New York, NY: The Penguin Press. 2018. ISBN 978-1-101-98141-2.
• The Churchill Complex: The Rise and Fall of the Special Relationship and the End of the Anglo-American Order. United Kingdom: Atlantic Books. 2020. ISBN 978-1-78649-465-8.^{[lower-alpha 3]}
• The Collaborators: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II, Penguin Random House, 2023.
• Spinoza: Freedom's Messiah, Yale University Press, 2024.