Bøger af Pankaj Mishra

Aseem, Virendra and Arun meet each other in IIT¿ a place regarded as the gateway to success, wealth, and fame by all who enter it. All except Arun. After university, he becomes a translator of Hindi novels, and watches Virendra become a hedge fund mogul in America and Aseem a swashbuckling media darling in Delhi. Eventually, Arun is drawn into a love affair with a beautiful, wounded young woman, even as Virendra and Aseem¿s lives fall spectacularly apart. And in this love affair and its violent denouement, Arun realizes he is as implicated in the world he has disowned as his friends were. That he too, like them, is as sullied, as compromised. Run and Hide is the story of an India that has transformed itself in the last twenty years, both materially and morally, and it tells more deeply and truly how those two things are wholly entwined than any novel in recent years. Profound, deeply human, perfectly realized, this is a magisterial work ¿ and Mishräs masterpiece.

From one of our foremost public intellectuals, an essential reckoning with the war in Gaza, its historical conditions, and moral and geopolitical ramificationsMemory of the Holocaust, the ultimate atrocity of Europe's civil wars and the paradigmatic genocide, has shaped the Western political and moral imagination in the postwar era. Fears of its recurrence have been routinely invoked to justify Israel's policies against Palestinians. But for most people around the world - the 'darker peoples', in W. E. B Du Bois's words - the main historical memory is of the traumatic experiences of slavery and colonialism, and the central event of the twentieth century is decolonisation - freedom from the white man's world. The World after Gaza takes the war in the Middle East, and the bitterly polarised reaction to it within as well as outside the West, as the starting point for a broad reevaluation of two competing narratives of the last century: the West's triumphant account of victory over Nazi and communist totalitarianism and the spread of liberal capitalism, and the darker peoples's frequently thwarted vision of racial equality. At a moment when the world's balance of power is shifting and a long-dominant Western minority no longer commands the same authority and credibility, it is critically important to enter the experiences and perspectives of the majority of the world's population. As old touchstones and landmarks crumble, only a new history with a sharply different emphasis can reorient us to the world and worldviews now emerging into the light. In this concise, powerful and pointed treatise, Mishra reckons with the fundamental questions posed by our present crisis - about whether some lives matter more than others, why identity politics built around memories of suffering is being widely embraced and why racial antagonisms are intensifying amid a far-right surge in the West, threatening a global conflagration. The World after Gaza is an indispensable moral guide to our past, present and future.

"Pankaj Mishra transforms a visceral, intimate story of one man's humble origins into a kaleidoscopic portrait of a society bedazzled by power and wealth-what it means on a human level, and what it costs. Run and Hide is a spectacular, illuminating work of fiction." -Jennifer Egan, author of Manhattan BeachGrowing up in a small railway town, Arun always dreamed of escape. His acceptance to the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, enabled through great sacrifice by his low-caste parents, is seemingly his golden ticket out of a life plagued by everyday cruelties and deprivations. At the predominantly male campus, he meets two students from similar backgrounds. Unlike Arun-scarred by his childhood, and an uneasy interloper among go-getters-they possess the sheer will and confidence to break through merciless social barriers. The alumni of IIT eventually go on to become the financial wizards of their generation, working hard and playing hard from East Hampton to Tuscany-the beneficiaries of unprecedented financial and sexual freedom. But while his friends play out Gatsby-style fantasies, Arun fails to leverage his elite education for social capital. He decides to pursue the writerly life, retreating to a small village in the Himalayas with his aging mother. Arun's modest idyll is one day disrupted by the arrival of a young woman named Alia, who is writing an exposé of his former classmates. Alia, beautiful and sophisticated, draws Arun back to the prospering world where he must be someone else if he is to belong. When he is implicated in a terrible act of violence committed by his closest friend from IIT, Arun will have to reckon with the person he has become. Run and Hide is Pankaj Mishra's powerful story of achieving material progress at great moral and emotional cost. It is also the story of a changing country and global order, and the inequities of class and gender that map onto our most intimate relationships.

In this outstanding collection of his recent writing, Mishra centres on the end of liberalism - its history and the contradictions within it, which have led to its decline.Wide-ranging and full of ideas, the essays talk about,among other things, Salman Rushdie, the selfhelp guru Jordan Peterson, The Economist magazine and Brexit.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceIn Temptations of the West, Pankaj Mishra brings literary authority and political insight to bear on journeys through South Asia, and considers the pressures of Western-style modernity and prosperity on the region. Beginning in India, his examination takes him from the realities of Bollywood stardom, to the history of Jawaharlal Nehru's post-independence politics. In Kashmir, he reports on the brutal massacre of thirty-five Sikhs, and its intriguing local aftermath. And in Tibet, he exquisitely parses the situation whereby the atheist Chinese government has discovered that Tibetan Buddhism can be "packaged and sold to tourists." Temptations of the West is essential reading about a conflicted and rapidly changing region of the world.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR'If you buy one literary novel this year, make sure it's this' THE TIMES'The Romantics looks to Flaubert's Sentimental Education, to E.M. Forster, to Turgenev. But it is the product of a distinctive and sharp intelligence' HILARY MANTEL 'Grips the reader as artfully and as compellingly as the first page of A Passage to India' THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKSWINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION1989. In the holy city of Varanasi, 19-year-old Samar rents a room to avoid a small-town job and lose himself in reading about worlds outside of India. But when he is thrust into local a circle of privileged European and American expats, led by the charismatic Miss West, Samar will soon face his own silent desires and crumbling beliefs.'A work of art' Financial Times'A supernova' The Washington Post'A charming debut' The Independent

One of the most acclaimed essayists writing today on the political hysteria plaguing the West

An End to Suffering is a search to understand the Buddha's relevance in a world where class oppression and religious violence are rife, and where poverty and terrorism cast a long, constant shadow.Pankaj Mishra describes his restless journeys into India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, among Islamists and the emerging Hindu middle class, exploring the myths and places of the Buddha's life. He discusses Western explorers' "discovery" of Buddhism in the nineteenth century. He also considers the impact of Buddhist ideas on such modern politicians as Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.As he reflects on his travels and on his own past, Mishra ultimately reaches an enlightenment of his own by discovering the living meaning of the Buddha's teaching, in this "unusually discerning, beautifully written, and deeply affecting reflection on Buddhism" (Booklist).

Set in contemporary India, The Romantics tells the story of Samar, a young man who goes to live in Benares to avoid a small-town job and to lose himself in reading and a world beyond himself. But soon the realities of the bustling holy city begin to intrude as Samar is introduced to a world of Europeans, of modern India and of disappointed love. 'If you buy one literary novel this year, make sure it's this' Amanda Craig, The Times, Summer Books 'This bright new star is the real thing' David Robson, Sunday Telegraph

Ever since Herodotus reported that it was home to gold-digging ants, travelers have been intrigued by India in all its beguiling complexity. This superb anthology gives us some of the best fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that has been written about the world's second most populous nation over the past two centuries.From Mark Twain's puzzled fascination with Indian castes and customs, to Allen Ginsberg's awe at the country's spiritual and natural splendors, or from J. R. Ackerley's delightful recollections of his visits with an eccentric gay Maharajah, to Gore Vidal's unforgettable scene in his novel Creation, in which his character finally meets the Buddha and is bewildered-all twenty-five selections in India in Mind reveal a place that evokes, in the traveler, reactions ranging from fear and perplexity to astonishment and wonder. Edited and with an introduction and chapter notes by the award-winning novelist Pankaj Mishra, India in Mind is a marvel of sympathy, sensitivity, and perception, not to mention outstanding writing.

How can we explain the origins of the great wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable in our close-knit world - from American 'shooters' and ISIS to Trump, from a rise in vengeful nationalism across the world to racism and misogyny on social media? In Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra answers our bewilderment by casting his gaze back to the eighteenth century, before leading us to the present.He shows that as the world became modern those who were unable to fulfil its promises - freedom, stability and prosperity - were increasingly susceptible to demagogues. The many who came late to this new world or were left, or pushed, behind, reacted in horrifyingly similar ways: intense hatred of invented enemies, attempts to re-create an imaginary golden age, and self-empowerment through spectacular violence. It was from among the ranks of the disaffected that the militants of the 19th century arose - angry young men who became cultural nationalists in Germany, messianic revolutionaries in Russia, bellicose chauvinists in Italy, and anarchist terrorists internationally.Today, just as then, the wider embrace of mass politics, technology, and the pursuit of wealth and individualism has cast many more billions adrift in a literally demoralized world, uprooted from tradition but still far from modernity - with the same terrible resultsMaking startling connections and comparisons, Age of Anger is a book of immense urgency and profound argument. It is a history of our present predicament unlike any other.

From Pankaj Mishra, author the successful Temptations of the West and Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, comes a provocative account of how China, India and the Muslim World are remaking the world in their own image.SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2013The Victorian period, viewed in the West as a time of self-confident progress, was experienced by Asians as a catastrophe. As the British gunned down the last heirs to the Mughal Empire, burned down the Summer Palace in Beijing, or humiliated the bankrupt rulers of the Ottoman Empire, it was clear that for Asia to recover a vast intellectual effort would be required.Pankaj Mishra's fascinating, highly entertaining new book tells the story of a remarkable group of men from across the continent who met the challenge of the West. Incessantly travelling, questioning and agonising, they both hated the West and recognised that an Asian renaissance needed to be fuelled in part by engagement with the enemy. Through many setbacks and wrong turns, a powerful, contradictory and ultimately unstoppable series of ideas were created that now lie behind everything from the Chinese Communist Party to Al Qaeda, from Indian nationalism to the Muslim Brotherhood.Mishra allows the reader to see the events of two centuries anew, through the eyes of the journalists, poets, radicals and charismatics who criss-crossed Europe and Asia and created the ideas which lie behind the powerful Asian nations of the twenty-first century.

An accomplished history of the Buddha, An End to Suffering is also a deeply personal story -- the story of Pankaj Mishra's search for meaning, for truth and peace in the modern world and, specifically, in post-colonial, independent India. As he describes his travels to unearth the origins of the Buddha, Mishra offers glimpses into his own quest for enlightenment, from childhood to September 11, from family background to friends met and made, from lessons learned to achievements as a writer. Through this, Mishra reveals the parallels between his time and the Buddha's, between their respective journeys -- and that of their country -- in search of progress and reconciliation.