SOURCE: Gott, Richard. “Foreign Affairs Lite, with Added Buruma.” New Statesman 131, no. 4591 (10 June 2002): 48-9.

In the following review, Gott comments that Buruma's prose in Bad Elements is “bland” and less engaging that his previous works.

The New York art world revives itself periodically by promoting the work of artists from distant locations, from Korea, say, or Japan. These are people who have gone to live in the United States and are familiar with its art practice, yet retain something of the “otherness” of their country of origin. Their work often receives critical acclaim for its “originality.”

Ian Buruma is a comparably exotic figure. A writer given space in the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker—and who now lives in London—he comes from a background that includes the Netherlands as well as Japan and China. He is not particularly radical in outlook, but he...