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. Decades of violence and chaos have produced a political and intellectual hysteria ranging from imperial atavism to paranoia about an Islamic threat to Western civilization that has affected even the most liberal of American and British writers. 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 to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Featuring a newly written introduction, these essays provide a vantage point from which to look seriously at the current crisis.
Author
Pankaj Mishra (पंकज मिश्रा) is a noted Indian essayist and novelist. In 1992, Mishra moved to Mashobra, a Himalayan village, where he began to contribute literary essays and reviews to The Indian Review of Books, The India Magazine, and the newspaper The Pioneer. His first book, Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India (1995), was a travelogue that described the social and cultural changes in India in the context of globalization. His novel The Romantics (2000), an ironic tale of people longing for fulfillment in cultures other than their own, was published in 11 European languages and won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum award for first fiction. His book An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World (2004) mixes memoir, history, and philosophy while attempting to explore the Buddha's relevance to contemporary times. Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond (2006), describes Mishra's travels through Kashmir, Bollywood, Afghanistan, Tibet, Nepal, and other parts of South and Central Asia.
