From the Ruins of Empire

Meticulous scholarship … History, as Mishra insists, has been glossed and distorted by the conqueror … [This] passionate account of the relentless subjugation of Asian empires by European, especially British, imperialism, is provocative, shaming and convincing – Michael Binyon * The Times *
One can only be thankful for writers like Mishra. From The Ruins Of Empire is erudite, provocative, inspiring and unremittingly complex; a model kind of non-fiction for our disordered days … May well be seen in years to come as a defining volume of its kind – Stuart Kelly * Scotsman *
Deeply researched and arrestingly original … this penetrating and disquieting book should be on the reading list of anybody who wants to understand where we are today – John Gray * Independent *
From the Ruins of Empire gives eloquent voice to [the] curious, complex intellectual odysseys … of some of Asia’s most educated, thoughtful men – Julia Lovell * Guardian *
Fascinating … a rich and genuinely thought-provoking book – Noel Malcolm * Telegraph *
Superb and ground-breaking. Not just a brilliant history of Asia, but a vital history for Asians – Mohsin Hamid
Lively … engaging … From the Ruins of Empire retains the power to instruct and even to shock. It provides us with an exciting glimpse of the vast and still largely unexplored terrain of anti-colonial thought that shaped so much of the post-western world in which we now live – Mark Mazower * Financial Times *
Brilliant … Mishra reverses the long gaze of the West upon the East, showing modern history as it has been felt by the majority of the world’s population - from Turkey to China. These are the amazing stories of the grandfathers of today’s angry Asians. Excellent – Orhan Pamuk
Jolts our historical imagination … a book of vast and wondrous learning and delightful and surprising associations that will give a new meaning to liberation geography – Hamid Dabashi (Professor of Iranian Studies, Columbia University, New York)
After Edward Said’s masterpiece Orientalism, From the Ruins of Empire offers another bracing view of the history of the modern world. Pankaj Mishra [is] a brilliant author of wide learning … skillful and captivating narration – Wang Hui (Professor of Chinese Intellectual History, Tsinghua University, Beijing)

Pankaj Mishra is the author of Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, The Romantics, An End to Suffering and Temptations of the West. He writes principally for the Guardian, The New York Times, London Review of Books and New York Review of Books. He lives in London, Shimla and New York.

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