Pankaj Mishra

Kashmir is one of the most protracted and bloody occupations in the world-and one of the most ignored. Under an Indian military rule that, at half a million strong, exceeds the total number of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, freedom of speech is non-existent, and human- rights abuses and atrocities are routinely visited on its Muslim-majority population. In the last two decades alone, over seventy thousand people have died. Ignored by its own corrupt politicians, abandoned by Pakistan and the West, which refuses to bring pressure to bear on its regional ally, India, the Kashmiri people's ongoing quest for justice and self- determination continues to be brutally suppressed. Exploring the causes and consequences of the occupation, Kashmir: The Case for Freedom is a passionate call for the end of occupation, and for the right of self- determination for the Kashmiri people.

Decades of violence and chaos have generated a political and intellectual hysteria-ranging from imperial atavism to paranoia about invading or hectically breeding Muslim hordes-that has affected even the most intelligent in Anglo-America. In Bland Fanatics, Pankaj Mishra examines this hysteria and its fantasists, taking on its arguments and the atmosphere in which it has festered and become influential. In essays that grapple with colonialism, human rights, and the doubling down of liberalism against a background of faltering economies and weakening Anglo-American hegemony, Mishra confronts writers from Jordan Peterson and Niall Ferguson to Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. With a newly written introduction, these essays provide a vantage point from which to look seriously at the current crisis.

A wide-ranging, controversial collection of critical essays on the political mania plaguing the West by one of the most important public intellectuals of our time. In America and in England, faltering economies at home and failed wars abroad have generated a political and intellectual hysteria. It is a derangement manifested in a number of ways: nostalgia for imperialism, xenophobic paranoia, and denunciations of an allegedly intolerant left. These symptoms can be found even among the most informed of Anglo-America. In Bland Fanatics, Pankaj Mishra examines the politics and culture of this hysteria, challenging the dominant establishment discourses of our times. In essays that grapple with the meaning and content of Anglo-American liberalism and its relations with colonialism, the global South, Islam, and "humanitarian" war, Mishra confronts writers such as Jordan Peterson, Niall Ferguson, and Salman Rushdie. He describes the doubling down of an intelligentsia against a background of weakening Anglo-American hegemony, and he explores the commitments of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the ideological determinations of The Economist. These essays provide a vantage point from which to understand the current crisis and its deep origins.

A wide-ranging, controversial collection of critical essays on the political mania plaguing the West by one of the most important public intellectuals of our time. In America and in England, faltering economies at home and failed wars abroad have generated a political and intellectual hysteria. It is a derangement manifested in a number of ways: nostalgia for imperialism, xenophobic paranoia, and denunciations of an allegedly intolerant left. These symptoms can be found even among the most informed of Anglo-America. In Bland Fanatics, Pankaj Mishra examines the politics and culture of this hysteria, challenging the dominant establishment discourses of our times. In essays that grapple with the meaning and content of Anglo-American liberalism and its relations with colonialism, the global South, Islam, and "humanitarian" war, Mishra confronts writers such as Jordan Peterson, Niall Ferguson, and Salman Rushdie. He describes the doubling down of an intelligentsia against a background of weakening Anglo-American hegemony, and he explores the commitments of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the ideological determinations of The Economist. These essays provide a vantage point from which to understand the current crisis and its deep origins.

________________'This anthology will help turn your intellectual understanding of oppression into an emotional one' - New Statesman'Thanks for being who you are and for giving us such exposure to wonderful people. Palestine is proud of you' - Suad Amiry________________The Palestine Festival of Literature was established in 2008. Bringing together writers from all corners of the globe, it aims to help Palestinians break the cultural siege imposed by the Israeli military occupation, to strengthen their artistic links with the rest of the world, and to reaffirm, in the words of Edward Said, ‘the power of culture over the culture of power’.Celebrating the tenth anniversary of PalFest, This Is Not a Border is a collection of essays, poems and stories from some of the world’s most distinguished artists, responding to their experiences at this unique festival. Both heartbreaking and hopeful, their gathered work is a testament to the power of literature to promote solidarity and courage in the most desperate of situations.Contributors: Susan Abulhawa, Suad Amiry, Victoria Brittain, Jehan Bseiso, Teju Cole, Molly Crabapple, Selma Dabbagh, Mahmoud Darwish, Najwan Darwish, Geoff Dyer, Yasmin El-Rifae, Adam Foulds, Ru Freeman, Omar Robert Hamilton, Suheir Hammad, Nathalie Handal, Mohammed Hanif, Jeremy Harding, Rachel Holmes, John Horner, Remi Kanazi, Brigid Keenan, Mercedes Kemp, Omar El-Khairy, Nancy Kricorian, Sabrina Mahfouz, Jamal Mahjoub, Henning Mankell, Claire Messud, China Miéville, Pankaj Mishra, Deborah Moggach, Muiz, Maath Musleh, Michael Palin, Ed Pavlic, Atef Abu Saif, Kamila Shamsie, Raja Shehadeh, Gillian Slovo, Ahdaf Soueif, Linda Spalding, Will Sutcliffe, Alice WalkerWith messages from China Achebe, Michael Ondaatje and J. M. Coetzee________________'Every literary act, whether it is a great epic poem or an honest piece of journalism or a simple nonsense tale for children is a blow against the forces of stupidity and ignorance and darkness … The Palestine Festival of Literature exists to do just that – and I salute it for its work. Not only this year but for as long as it is necessary' - Philip Pullman

"Ett konstverk." – Financial Times "En supernova." – The Washington Post "Om du bara köper en skönlitterär roman i år – låt det bli den här." – The Times "Romantikerna blickar mot Flauberts Den känslosamme lärjungen, mot E.M. Forster och Turgenjev. Men det är ett verk som bär på en helt egen, skarp intelligens." – Hilary Mantel "Fängslar läsaren lika skickligt och ofrånkomligt som första sidan i En färd till Indien." – The New York Review of Books

Examining a range of novelists and critics during the decades of decolonization, the cold war and globalization-from Naipaul to Susan Sontag, Fanon to Edward Said-Pankaj Mishra uncovers two divergent trends: while writers in the global south could not but describe individual fates in their relation to coercive power, political intelligence and literary sensibility became gradually disjunct in Anglo-American fiction and criticism. Modern literature has recorded, from the nineteenth century onwards, the determining influence of ideas and ideology on private experience. But social and political conflict became conspicuous by its absence in much contemporary fiction and literary criticism in the United States and Britain. Literature at the End of History makes clear how impoverished the West's literary culture is as a result-with vanishingly few exceptions-and where the great literature of the world really comes from.

‘Mishra’s book is in the best tradition of Buddhism, both dispassionate and deeply engaged, complicated and simple, erudite and profoundly humane’ The New York TimesAn 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 a postcolonial, 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 the September 11 attacks, from family background to friends met and made, from lessons learned to his 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.‘Mishra is one of the most important voices of our generation’ Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

Minnet av Förintelsen, den ultimata grymheten i Tysklands folkmord på judar, har format det västerländska politiska och moraliska medvetandet i efterkrigstiden. Men för en majoritet av världens befolkning, det vill säga en icke-vit befolkning, är slaveriets och kolonialismens trauman i stället 1900-talets centrala och mest avgörande historiska händelse.I Världen efter Gaza: En kort historik, visar den prisbelönta författaren och tänkaren Pankaj Mishra hur minnet av Förintelsen förskjutits sedan sent 60-tal till att, av främst USA och Israel, anses vara en enskild berättelse om antisemitism, snarare än en följd av den moderna historiens rasistiska expansionism. Denna förskjutning, menar Mishra, ligger till grund för dagens krig i Mellanöstern och de bittert polariserade reaktionerna på det, inom och utanför västvärlden.Mishra som själv vuxit upp i det mångkulturella Indien tar i denna kraftfulla skrift itu med de grundläggande frågorna för vår samtid: De historiska exemplen talar för att minnet av smärta i sin tur kan legitimera förtryck. Är vissa liv då mer värda än andra?Världen efter Gaza ger oss en oumbärlig vägledning för att förstå vårt förflutna, vår nutid och vår framtid. Det är en viktig uppgörelse med kriget i Gaza, med dess historiska omständigheter och med dess moraliska och geopolitiska innebörd.PANKAJ MISHRA, född 1969 i norra Indien, är en välrenommerad författare, tänkare och essäist. Våren 2024 tog hans artikel som publicerades i LRB, The Shoah after Gaza , världen med storm. Han är ledamot i brittiska Royal Society of Literature och bor numera i London. "Han skriver mycket bra och språket har föredömligt flyt. (...) läsvärd, inte minst eftersom den erbjuder ett perspektiv präglat av öppenhet och ärlighet. Mishra har en grundläggande respekt för båda sidor i konflikten" BTJ, Mats K.G. Johansson

From the award-winning writer and thinker, an essential reckoning with the war in Gaza, its historical conditions, and moral and geopolitical ramifications'Courageous and bracing, learned and ethical, rigorous and mind-expanding' NAOMI KLEIN'Mishra has made a powerful contribution to the moral history of the world' ANDREW O'HAGAN'Urgent' HISHAM MATAR'Brilliant' WILLIAM DALRYMPLEMemory 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 global majority'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.