From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia
VIEW EVENT DETAILSEvening discussion with acclaimed author Pankaj Mishra and Zoher Abdoolcarim, Asia Editor, TIME International
The Victorian period, viewed in the West as a time of self-confident progress, was experienced by Asians as a catastrophe, with foreign soldiers and merchants tearing apart the great empires which had once formed the heart of civilization. As the British gunned down the last heirs to the Mughal Empire, burned down the Summer Palace in Beijing, or humiliated the bankrupt rulers of the Ottoman Empire, it was clear that for Asia to recover a vast intellectual effort would be required.
In his new book, From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia, Pankaj Mishra allows the reader to see foreign imperialism anew, through the eyes of the journalists, poets, radicals and charismatics who criss-crossed Europe and Asia, and through their thoughts and writings to understand how China, India and the Muslim world are remaking the world we know — in their own image, not that of the West.
Pankaj Mishra is the author of numerous books, including An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World and Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond. He also writes literary and political essays for the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, The Guardian, the New Yorker and the London Review of Books. Mishra has been a Visiting Professor at Wellesley College and Visiting Fellow at University College, London, and was nominated as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009.
Zoher Abdoolcarim was appointed Asia Editor for TIME International in 2008. Prior to this role, he was a senior editor at TIME Asia, where he helped shape all aspects of TIME’s coverage of Asia. Over the course of his career, Abdoolcarim has been a foreign correspondent based in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, with reporting assignments in the Philippines, India, Brunei and Hong Kong. An ethnic Indian born and raised in Hong Kong, Abdoolcarim graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Book sale after program.