Book description
From Bollywood stars in Bombay worrying whether they are sexy enough to
a heroin addict in Pakistan mocking jihad; from Indian mafia dons with
political ambitions to Afghans waiting for American benevolence; from
Kashmiri Muslims longing for democracy to Tibetan Buddhists fighting to
preserve religion in politics -
Temptations of the West
is a travel book unlike any other. In a narrative as revealing as it is
profound, Pankaj Mishra’s new book dissolves the old boundaries between
East and West, challenging every romantic cliché about the conflicts and
dilemmas at the heart of the modern world.
‘Mishra offers a compelling blend of memoir, narrative history,
politics, religion and philosophy. Thoughtful, intelligent and rigorous,
this is a deep, insightful study of the very notion of modernity’ Observer
‘Mishra is a precise observer and a subtle analyst, keener to
understand than to blame . . . In a thousand details - such as the
grimace he catches on the face of a sycophantic businessman as a
politician’s bodyguard rinses curry-stained hands in his swimming pool -
he salutes humanity’s paradoxes and wit’ The Economist
‘Wonderful. The narrative is interspersed with sophisticated cultural
commentary . . . and, if anything, the point of this important book is
to collapse fallacious distinctions between East and West’ Condé Nast Traveller
Pankaj Mishra was born in North India, in 1969. He is the author of
Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India
; a novel, The Romantics
, which won the LA Times
Art Seidenbaum award for first fiction; and a highly acclaimed book
about the Buddha, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World
. Mishra writes for several publications, including the New York
Review of Books
, the New Statesman
, Granta
, the Times Literary Supplement
and the Guardian
.
