A complete bibliography in reverse chronological order, spanning fiction, travel, criticism, intellectual history and political writing, including edited and collaborative volumes.
Forthcoming
2027 · Verso
Reading in a Dark Time
Release2027
Through portraits of writers and literary cultures across Palestine, India, China, Turkey, Egypt, Europe and the United States, Mishra considers literature as a form of social inquiry inseparable from political and historical life. Publication is scheduled for 2027.
“Literature is inseparable from its social and political context.”Verso
“Global in scope.”Verso
“Pankaj Mishra at his majestic best.”Verso
Published books
2025 · Penguin Press
The World After Gaza
A historical and political account of the war in Gaza and its global reverberations, examining how memories of the Holocaust, colonialism and the postwar international order shape the present conflict.
“Courageous and bracing, learned and ethical.”Naomi Klein
“A triumphant work of empathy.”Anand Giridharadas
“A book of magnitude and grace.”Markaz Review
2022 · Penguin / FSG
Run and Hide
A Novel
Three classmates rise from the Indian Institute of Technology into a world of wealth and global ambition. Their divergent lives form a study of friendship, class mobility, materialism and moral compromise.
“A book that demands to be read.”Mohsin Hamid
“Terrific . . . deeply satisfying to read.”Kamila Shamsie
“A novel built to last.”The Scotsman
2020 · Picador
Bland Fanatics
Liberals, Race, and Empire
A collection of essays on liberalism, empire and race that challenges familiar Western narratives of progress and examines the political orthodoxies exposed by recent crises.
“Erudite and dryly witty.”The Boston Globe
“A dazzling display of what close analysis and precise polemic can achieve.”The Guardian
“A useful corrective to the Grand Narrative.”The New York Times
2017 · FSG / Penguin
Age of Anger
A History of the Present
A magisterial history of the volatile present, Age of Anger traces the long arc of romantic nationalism and illiberal reaction across two centuries — from Voltaire and Rousseau to Modi, Brexit, and Trump. Mishra argues that the Enlightenment's promise of universal prosperity has curdled into a global age of resentment, one in which the discontents of modernity are visited not only by the dispossessed but by the inheritors of an unstable, hubristic West.
“Around the world, both East and West, the insurrectionary fury of militants, zealots and populists has overturned the post-Cold-War global consensus. Where does their rage come from, and where will it end? One of the sharpest cultural critics and political analysts releases his landmark “history of the present.”Boyd Tonkin, Newsweek
“Bracing…The first essential read of the Trump Era”Vogue
“Ground-breaking new analysis”BBC Radio 4 “Book of the Week”
“This important, erudite book probes the deepest roots of our inflamed moment.”New York Times
“An original attempt to explain today’s paranoid hatreds…Insightful…Iconoclastic…Mr. Mishra shocks on many levels.”The Economist
2013 · Penguin India
A Great Clamour
Encounters with China and Its Neighbours
Travelling through China, Tibet, Mongolia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan, Mishra considers the contradictions of contemporary China and the political and cultural shadow it casts across its neighbours.
“Thoughtful, intelligent, rigorous and deeply insightful.”TimeOut
“Intriguing vignettes of China’s transformation.”BusinessWorld
“Full of unexpected ideas and fresh insights.”Penguin India
2012 · FSG / Penguin
From the Ruins of Empire
The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia
In his brilliant reversal of the long Western gaze upon the East, Mishra shows 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. Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize, the Orwell Prize, and the Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award; winner of the 2013 Crossword Award for Best Nonfiction and the 2014 Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding — the first book by a non-Western writer to receive the prize.
“A subtle, erudite and entertaining account…by a leading Indian public intellectual who, with a surprising new perspective, is the heir to Edward Said”Best Books of 2012, The Economist
“Enormously ambitious but thoroughly readable, this book is essential reading for everyone who is interested in the processes of change that have led to the emergence of today’s Asia”Amitav Ghosh, Wall Street Journal
“Compelling…Invaluable…Its detailed and rigorous historical emphasis…stands in stark contrast to some of the more superficial instant analyses of what the ‘rise of Asia’ might mean for the world”Rana Mitter, Times Literary Supplement
“Not just an excellent history of Asia in the late colonial period, but also a valuable history for contemporary Asians thinking about the future of their continent”Mohsin Hamid, 2012 Books of the Year, Financial Times
“A reminder, by way of an intellectual history of Asian responses to imperialism, that European intellectual and political predominance was a freak of history unlikely to be sustained. Whatever else may distinguish this century from the last one, the geographies of thought, politics, and energy are all being remade”Benjamin Kunkel, 2012 Books of the Year, New Statesman
2011 · Verso
Kashmir
The Case for Freedom
A multi-author volume by Arundhati Roy, Pankaj Mishra, Hilal Bhatt, Angana P. Chatterji and Tariq Ali examining the history, human consequences and political claims surrounding the conflict in Kashmir.
“One of the most protracted and bloody occupations in the world.”Verso
“A passionate call for the end of occupation.”Verso
“For the right of self-determination for the Kashmiri people.”Verso
2006 · Picador / FSG
Temptations of the West
How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond
A work of reportage and reflection that follows Mishra through Kashmir, Bollywood, Afghanistan, Tibet, Nepal, and other parts of South and Central Asia. Like his previous books, it was featured in the New York Times' 100 Best Books of the Year. A brave, often discomforting book about the illusions that rule both East and West — and about the lives forced to be lived in their long shadow.
It is impossible in a short form to do justice to the density and complexity of his arguments, to his comprehensive illustrations, to his scathing demolition of the comfort zones of both East and West, and to the intrepid and endlessly questioning spirit which lies behind his book.Hilary Mantel · The New York Review of Books
Unusually insightful and eloquent, Mishra deftly deciphers forces political, religious, and economic; vividly profiles remarkable individuals; and, most resonantly, expresses compassion for all who are forced to live in fear.Donna Seaman · Booklist
Mishra has a talent for discovering extraordinary, even lurid characters to illuminate his account of dashed dreams, clashing religions, huge wealth, crushing poverty, corruption, oppression and, almost unbelievably, hope. A brave book — and, for anyone in the West able to look beyond clichés and rhetoric, an essential one.Ben Macintyre · The New York Times
Mishra tells the reader more about the true condition of much of Asia today than can be gleaned from any number of weighty academic tomes… In the end this subtle, vivid and inexhaustibly thought-provoking book is as much about the illusions that rule the West as it is about lands that lie beyond its frontiers.John Gray · The Guardian
2005 · Vintage
India in Mind
Edited with an Introduction and Notes
An anthology of twenty-five works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry about India, bringing together writers including Mark Twain, Allen Ginsberg, J. R. Ackerley and Gore Vidal.
“A superb anthology.”Vintage
“A marvel of sympathy, sensitivity, and perception.”Vintage
“Outstanding writing.”Vintage
2004 · Picador / FSG
An End to Suffering
The Buddha in the World
A book that mixes memoir, history, and philosophy in an attempt to explore the Buddha's relevance to contemporary times. Mishra's journey takes him from his Himalayan village to the ruins of Nalanda, from the libraries of Oxford to the meditation caves of Sri Lanka — at once a personal essay and a meditation on what it might mean to live ethically in a disenchanted world.
The best literary non-fiction Indian book in a decade and one of the most beautiful books ever published in Buddhist literature.Pradeep Sebastian · The Hindu
An End to Suffering poignantly captures one of the most intellectually and morally radical responses ever conceived to the challenge of suffering.Pratap Bhanu Mehta · Biblio
The rare writer who is at ease as a historian, philosopher, traveler, and memoirist, and the combination of roles allows him to produce a book that few others could even have attempted.Pico Iyer · The New York Review of Books
Mishra's book is in the best tradition of Buddhism, both dispassionate and deeply engaged, complicated and simple, erudite and profoundly humane.Adam Goodheart · The New York Times
It is a tribute to Mishra's ability to link India's past to its present that he has turned a book on the Buddha into a social commentary of immense urgency.Aravind Adiga · Time
2000 · Picador / Random House
The Romantics
A Novel
An ironic tale of people longing for fulfillment in cultures other than their own. Set in Benares among a circle of Indian students, expatriate Europeans, and drifting pilgrims of every kind, the novel observes the small encounters and large aspirations of those who have come looking for India — or for themselves. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction.
A supernova in the wan firmament of recent fiction… Mishra's humanity and emotional clarity are rare in so young a writer.Marie Arana · The Washington Post
A first novel of astonishing maturity. It has virtually none of the rawness of apprentice-work and a great deal of that calm authority which one associates with writers in their prime.David Robson · The Daily Telegraph
Pankaj Mishra's The Romantics has a luminous intelligence about love, literature and politics in Benares that make him the Indian Turgenev.Amanda Craig · The Times (London)
Continuously absorbing, beautifully modulated and shaded… the past and present states of many worlds, Indian and European, seem to have come as if without effort to the surface.John Bayley · The New York Review of Books
A voice that fuses the lapidary precision of Flaubert with the meditative lyricism of Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, a voice that's alternately wry and ruminative, meticulous and expansive.Michiko Kakutani · The New York Times
1995 · Penguin India
Butter Chicken in Ludhiana
Travels in Small Town India
Mishra's first book — a travelogue describing the social and cultural changes then reshaping India in the new context of globalization. A young writer sets out from his Himalayan village to see the small towns and provincial cities of the subcontinent: what he finds is a country straining between inherited identities and imported futures, a comedy of aspiration, confusion, and disquiet.
A marvellous travel book about small-town India, where the village and the city, the folk and the kitsch, and the comic and the violent threaten to converge.Ashis Nandy
One of the most disturbing and entertaining descriptions of the upwardly mobile classes in provincial India.Ian Buruma
A classic of Indian non-fiction… For all that it is a serious work, Butter Chicken in Ludhiana is a very funny book: Mishra can be both appalled and amused by what he sees and hears, and the characteristic confusion and comedy of Indian life leaps off these pages.Chandrahas Choudhury
A love-letter to the real republic. No other book defines as clearly, and with such troubled irony, our last decade of change.Amitava Kumar
