Dive deep into the minds of those who dared to defy convention in Against the Grain, a compelling exploration of wisdom, vulnerability and visionary thinking. Through conversations with luminaries like A.R. Rahman, Uday Kotak, Nandan Nilekani, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Naval Ravikant and many more, this book reveals what it takes to carve your own path, defy norms and truly embrace your uniqueness.Veteran business journalist Pankaj Mishra skilfully retraces the journeys of these bold outliers, delving into their experiences of hope, disillusionment, victory, defeat, joy and pain with refreshing candour. Drawing from transformative interviews featured on Mishra’s acclaimed and beloved podcast Outliers, this book offers a lucid and captivating narrative that vividly portrays how some of India’s most prominent figures confront the myriad challenges and uncertainties of life.A must-read for those navigating their own paths to success, this chronicle serves as an inspiring testament to resilience, determination and individuality.
The three-day 'The Folio Prize Fiction Festival 2014' brought together some great writers and audiences and gave them a real opportunitey to talk in depth about their work and similar subjects.
The festival included interviews and discussions with top writers, novelists, poets, critics and publishers, including Eimear McBride, Paul Baggaley, Sergio De La Pava, Rachel Kushner, Sarah Hall, Pankaj Mishra, Stephanie Merritt, Jane Gardam, Mark Haddon
A little more than a century ago, as the Japanese navy annihilated the giant Russian one at the Battle of Tsushima, original thinkers across Asia, working independently, sought to frame a distinctly Asian intellectual tradition that would inform and inspire the continent's anticipated rise to dominance. Asian dominance did not come to pass, and those thinkers-Tagore, Gandhi, and later Nehru in India; Liang Qichao and Sun Yatsen in China; Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Abdurreshi al Ibrahim in the ruins of the Ottoman Empire-are seen as outriders from the main anticolonial tradition. But Pankaj Mishra shows that it was otherwise in this stereotype-shattering book. His enthralling group portrait of like minds scattered across a vast continent makes clear that modern Asia's revolt against the West is not the one led by faith-fired terrorists and thwarted peasants but one with deep roots in the work of thinkers who devised a view of life that was neither modern nor antimodern, neither colonialist nor anticolonialist. In broad, deep, dramatic chapters, Mishra tells the stories of these figures, unpacks their philosophies, and reveals their shared goal of a greater Asia.
How can we explain the origins of the great wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable in our close-knit world-from American shooters and ISIS to Donald Trump, from a rise in vengeful nationalism to racism and misogyny on social media? In Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra answers our bewilderment by casting his gaze back to the eighteenth century before leading us to the present. As the world became modern, those who were unable to enjoy its promises of freedom, stability, and prosperity were increasingly susceptible to demagogues. It was from among the ranks of the disaffected that the militants of the nineteenth century arose-angry young men who became cultural nationalists in Germany, messianic revolutionaries in Russia, bellicose chauvinists in Italy, and anarchist terrorists internationally. Today, just as then, the embrace of mass politics and technology and the pursuit of wealth and individualism have cast many more billions adrift, uprooted from tradition but still far from modernity-with the same terrible results. Making startling connections and comparisons, Age of Anger is a book of immense urgency and profound argument. It is a history of our present predicament unlike any other.
