Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race and Empire

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Description

Decades of violence and chaos have generated a political and intellectual hysteriaranging from imperial atavism to paranoia about invading or hectically breeding Muslim hordesthat has affected even the most intelligent in Anglo-America. 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 and Niall Ferguson to Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. With a newly written introduction, these essays provide a vantage point from which to look seriously at the current crisis.

Reviews

literary iconoclast [and] maverick political thinker-edgy, sly and idiosyncratic-weaving a kind of witchcraft with the wounded frankness of prose -- (praise for Pankaj Mishra) * Financial Express *
Bracing ... The first essential read of the Trump Era -- (Praise for Age of Anger) * Vogue *
This important, erudite book proves the deepest roots of our inflamed moment -- (in praise of Age of Anger) * New York Times *
An original attempt to explain today's paranoid hatreds ... Insightful ... Iconoclastic ... Mishra shocks on many levels -- (Praise for Age of Anger) * The Economist *
A searing attack on the assumption that modernity is synonymous with progress -- (Praise for Age of Anger) * Wall Street Journal *
Urgently vigorous ... It is Age of Anger's singular ambition to give the world as we have it a past, a how-we-got-here, a where-the-mistakes-lie ... The book marks an important advance in our most urgent discourse -- (Praise for Age of Anger) * The National *
A bowel-churning kick in the guts ... [Pankaj Mishra's] vision is unusually broad, accommodating and resistant to categorisation. It is the kind of vision the world needs right now -- (Praise for Age of Anger) * Financial Times *
The ideal writer to diagnose our current moment * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Bracing and illuminating ... Mishra writes with ... style, energy and incision ... [He] dwells in the realm of ideas and emotions, which get short shrift in most accounts of global politics ... A decent liberalism would read sharp critics like Mishra and learn. * New York Times Book Review *
Dazzling...an extraordinarly powerful argument, by a writer of powerful and perhaps even remorseless conviction, for the case that we need first to rethink our past in order to reshape our future. * ArtReview *
An important and illuminating critic of liberalism and globalisation -- Kenan Malik * Observer *
Compelling -- Edward Luce * Financial Times *
The Anglo-American commentariat is full of lofty egos. Pankaj Mishra has developed a reputation as their great deflater ... Mishra's analysis of Anglo-American barbarism is cutting -- Rebecca Liu * White Review *
Every sentence is assembled with meticulous thought ... What the English have often flattered themselves saying they did, Mishra, as an English writer, really does: his duty. His careful discipline shows him to stand clear of the crisis of the Anglo intellectual that he narrates. * Bookforum *
Lacerating ... Mishra artfully pummels liberalism's Grand Narrative. -- Damon Linker * New York Times *
Mishra excels at calling out intellectual vapidities ... [he] invariably knows where the bodies are buried and how to use the incriminating detail to good effect. -- Abhrajyoti Chakraborty * Guardian *

Author Bio

Pankaj Mishra is the author of numerous books, most recently The Age of Anger: A History of the Present (2017). He writes literary and political essays for the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Guardian, New Yorker, London Review of Books, and Bloomberg View, among other American, British, and Indian publications. His work has also appeared in Times Literary Supplement, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New Republic, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Time, The Independent, Granta, The Nation, n+1, Poetry, Common Knowledge, Outlook, and Harpers.