SOURCE: Hobson, Albert. “How Europeans See England.” Contemporary Review 276, no. 1608 (January 2000): 48-9.

In the following review, Hobson argues that Buruma offers a compelling analysis of English culture in Voltaire's Coconuts, calling the work “worth-while and stimulating.”

I opened this book [Voltaire's Coconuts] with a sinking heart. The title is fashionably silly, in the manner of Flaubert's Parrot, while the subtitle suggests a thesis imperfectly converted into a book. I was, however, delighted to discover that it is urbane, middleweight intellectual fun, which told me a great deal I did not know and ought to have done. It is one of those books that holds up a mirror to the English, written by a cosmopolitan with sufficient detachment and a good literary style, which is needed—because we change quite quickly nowadays. (I recall Renier's influential The English: Are They Human? which did the same job in the 1930s...