As in the early 20th century, the elemental forces of globalisation have unravelled broad solidarities and loyalties. Pankaj Mishra Read Quote
Living in a cultural milieu where the foreign writers most widely available and admired were Russian, I came very late to postwar American writers, and I had great trouble with the canonically exalted white male writers I tried first. Pankaj Mishra Read Quote
The cultural decoding that many American writers require has become an even harder task in the age of globalisation. The experience they describe has grown more private; its essential background, the busy larger world, has receded. Pankaj Mishra Read Quote
Democracy, loudly upheld as a cure for much of the ailing world, has proved no guarantor of political wisdom, even if it remains the least bad form of government. Pankaj Mishra Read Quote
So much of western self-perception and intellectual worldview has been shaped by the moral rhetoric of the Cold War, the discourse in which communism featured as a clear enemy, determined to rule the world. Pankaj Mishra Read Quote
In December 2004, I travelled on the road from Uzbekistan across the Oxus River on which the first Soviet convoys had rolled into Afghanistan 25 years before. Pankaj Mishra Read Quote
For boys like me, in north Indian railway towns in the ’70s and ’80s, where nothing much happened apart from the arrival and departure of trains from big cities, the Soviet Union alone appeared to promise an escape from our limited, dusty world. Pankaj Mishra Read Quote
It’s strange to recall that America animated none of my youthful daydreams. I did not see a Hollywood film until my late teens. Pankaj Mishra Read Quote
Devout Anatolian masses rising from poverty have transformed Turkey politically and economically. Pankaj Mishra Read Quote
Though there are laws against blasphemy and insult to religion in many European countries, France has institutionalised its anti-clerical past by proscribing religion from public life. Pankaj Mishra Read Quote
