Synopses & Reviews
A vivid, often surprising account of South Asia today by the author of An End to Suffering In his new book, Pankaj Mishra brings literary authority and political insight to bear on travels that are at once epic and personal. Traveling in the changing cultures of South Asia, Mishra sees the pressures—the temptations—of Western-style modernity and prosperity, and teases out the paradoxes of globalization. A
visit to Allahabad, birthplace of Jawaharlal Nehru, occasions a brief history of the tumultuous post-independence politics Nehru set in motion. In Kashmir, just after the brutal killing of thirtyfive Sikhs, Mishra sees Muslim guerrillas playing with Sikh village children while the media ponder a (largely irrelevant) visit by President Clinton. And in Tibet Mishra exquisitely parses the situation whereby the Chinese government—officially atheist and strongly opposed to a free Tibet—has discovered that Tibetan Buddhism can “be packaged and sold to tourists.”
Temptations of the West is a book concerned with history still in the making—essential reading about a conflicted and rapidly changing region.
Review
"Fascinating . . . Pankaj Mishra's travels are interwoven with pungent commentary on modern politics in South Asia. . . . This is not a gentle book, but it is a brave one."--
The New York Times Book Review
"A set of probing essays about strife and sorrow in volatile South Asia . . . Unusually insightful and eloquent, Mishra deftly deciphers forces political, religious, and economic."--Booklist
"An insightful new book that blends journalism, travel writing, memoir, and sharp political commentary."--The Miami Herald
Synopsis
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice In 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.
About the Author
PANKAJ MISHRA was born in north India in 1969. He is the author of
An End to Suffering and
The Romantics (which won the
Los Angeles Times’s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction) and a regular contributor to
The New York Review of Books.