{"product_id":"9781250037718","title":"From the Ruins of Empire : The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eFrom the Ruins of Empire\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor(s): Pankaj Mishra\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eA \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of the Year and a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Book Review Editors' Choice\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA SURPRISING, GRIPPING NARRATIVE DEPICTING THE THINKERS WHOSE IDEAS SHAPED CONTEMPORARY CHINA, INDIA, AND THE MUSLIM WORLD\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA little more than a century ago, independent thinkers across Asia sought to frame a distinct intellectual tradition that would inspire the continent's rise to dominance. Yet this did not come to pass, and today those thinkers—Tagore, Gandhi, and later Nehru in India; Liang Qichao and Sun Yat-sen in China; Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Abdurreshi al Ibrahim of the Ottoman Empire—are seen as outsiders within the main anticolonial tradition. But as Pankaj Mishra demonstrates in this enthralling portrait of like minds, Asia's revolt against the West is not the one led by faith-fired terrorists and thwarted peasants; rather, it is rooted in the ideas of these once renowned intellectuals. Now, when the ascendency of Asia seems possible as never before, \u003ci\u003eFrom the Ruins of Empire\u003c\/i\u003e is as necessary as it is timely—a book indispensable to our understanding of the world and our place in it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReview(s):\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e“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...Amazing.” —\u003ci\u003eOrhan Pamuk\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Essential reading for everyone who is interested in the processes of change that have led to the emergence of today's Asia.” —\u003ci\u003eAmitav Ghosh, The Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Timely and important...An astute and entertaining synthesis of these neglected histories.” —\u003ci\u003eHari Kunzru, The New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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 anticolonial thought that shaped so much of the post-Western world in which we now live.” —\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times (London)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Subtle, erudite, and entertaining.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“History is sometimes a contest of narratives. Here Pankaj Mishra looks back on the 19th and 20th centuries through the work of three Asian thinkers: Jamal al-Din Afghani, Liang Qichao and Rabindranath Tagore. The story that emerges is quite different from that which most Western readers have come to accept. 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.” —\u003ci\u003eAmitav Ghosh, author of Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“With uncommon empathy, Mishra has excavated a range of ideas, existential debates, and spiritual struggles set in motion by Asia's rude collision with the West, leading to outcomes no one could have predicted but which, after his account, seem more comprehensible--and that is no mean achievement. Above all, Mishra sheds new light on an important part of our collective journey, the inner and outer turmoil we inhabited, the price we paid, and what we did to each other along the way. We might yet learn from it and redeem ourselves in some measure.” —\u003ci\u003eNamit Arora, 3 Quarks Daily\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“After Edward Said's masterpiece \u003ci\u003eOrientalism\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eFrom the Ruins of Empire\u003c\/i\u003e offers another bracing view of the history of the modern world. Pankaj Mishra, a brilliant author of wide learning, takes us through, with his skillful and captivating narration, interlinked historical events across Japan, China, Turkey, Iran, India, Egypt, and Vietnam, opening up a fresh dialogue with and between such major Asian reformers, intellectuals, and revolutionaries as Liang Qichao, Tagore, Jamal al-din al-Afghani, and Sun Yatsen.” —\u003ci\u003eWang Hui, author of China's New Order and The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought and Professor of Chinese Intellectual History at Tsinghua University, Beijing\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Pankaj Mishra has produced a riveting account that makes new and illuminating connections. He follows the intellectual trail of this contested history with both intelligence and moral clarity. In the end we realise that what we are holding in our hands is not only a deeply entertaining and deeply humane book, but a balance sheet of the nature and mentality of colonisation.” —\u003ci\u003eHisham Matar\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Mishra's survey knowledgeably presents an intellectual history of anti-imperialism.” —\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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.” —\u003ci\u003eMichael Binyon, Times (London)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Superb and groundbreaking. Not just a brilliant history of Asia, but a vital history for Asians.” —\u003ci\u003eMohsin Hamid, author of How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Fascinating…a rich and genuinely thought-provoking book.” —\u003ci\u003eNoel Malcolm, Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One can only be thankful for writers like Mishra. \u003ci\u003eFrom The Ruins Of Empire\u003c\/i\u003e 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.” —\u003ci\u003eStuart Kelly, Scotsman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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.” —\u003ci\u003eJohn Gray, Independent\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Mishra has no time at all for big, broad-brush accounts of western success contrasted with eastern hopelessness. Instead, he is preoccupied by the tragic moral ambivalence of his tale. . . \u003ci\u003eFrom the Ruins of Empire\u003c\/i\u003e gives eloquent voice to their curious, complex intellectual odysseys as they struggled to respond to the western challenge . . . Luminous details glimmer through these swaths of political and military history.” —\u003ci\u003eJulia Lovell, The Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[An] ambitious survey of the decline and fall of Western colonial empires and the rise of their successors. . . A highly readable and illuminating exploration of the way in which Asian, and Muslim countries in particular, have resented Western dominance and reacted against it with varying degrees of success.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Tablet (UK)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eFrom the Ruins of Empire\u003c\/i\u003e jolts our historical imagination and suddenly places it on the right, though deeply repressed, axis. It is a book of vast and wondrous learning and delightful and surprising associations that will give a new meaning to a liberation geography. From close and careful readings of some mighty Asian intellectuals of the last two centuries who have rarely been placed in this creative and daring conversation with each other, Pankaj Mishra has discovered and revealed, against the grain of conventional and cliched bifurcations of 'The West and the Rest,' a continental shift in our historical consciousness that will define a whole new spectrum of critical thinking.” —\u003ci\u003eHamid Dabashi, Columbia University\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShort-listed Orwell Prize Shortlist (2012), Long-listed The Economist Magazine Books of the Year (2012), Short-listed Orwell Prize Shortlist (2013)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN:  9781250037718\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Picador","offers":[{"title":"Paperback \/ softback","offer_id":40627954712782,"sku":"9781250037718","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0600\/7029\/7806\/products\/getimage_c27bec54-0124-40a0-83a2-557856f5294a.jpg?v=1638752850","url":"https:\/\/pickwickbookshop.com\/products\/9781250037718","provider":"Pickwick Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}