Pankaj Mishra

Understand the modern world’s rage and reckoning with Pankaj Mishra, one of India’s most celebrated and internationally acclaimed writers, essayists, and public intellectuals. Writing with extraordinary historical sweep, literary intelligence, and postcolonial insight, Mishra examines the forces that have shaped the modern world — nationalism, colonialism, Westernisation, and the global spread of resentment and anger — with a clarity and moral seriousness that few contemporary writers can match. His landmark work From the Ruins of Empire (2012) traces how Asian thinkers responded to Western imperialism and laid the intellectual groundwork for the anti-colonial movements of the twentieth century. His follow-up Age of Anger (2017) is a sweeping intellectual history of the resentment and nihilism that fuels modern politics from ISIS to Trump. His other essential works include Temptations of the West, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World, and the essay collection Bland Fanatics. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how we got here.