Reading in Dark Times: Literature and Politics
Oct 2027 · Verso Books
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About this ebook
The best selling author of The Age of Anger and The World After Gaza challenges the relationship between literature and politics, Western cultural hegemony and the limits of the written word
What can literature tell us about the making of the modern world?
Examining a range of novelists and critics during the decades of decolonization, the cold war and globalization, Pankaj Mishra uncovers how political intelligence and literary sensibility became gradually disjunct in Anglo-American fiction and criticism, and the consequences that has for what and how we read.
Examining writers from Naipaul to Don DeLillo, Natalia Ginzburg to Edward Said, Mishra explores the twenty-first century decline of Westen cultural promenence. In doing so, he unravels the literary, political and ideological clashes that make up contemporary fiction and reading. Taking its name from Hannah Arendt's Men in Dark Times, this book lays the foundation for radical, internationalist forms of cultural criticism. Like our cultural moment, Mishra traverses borders and languages, asking what kinds of worlds emerge through this literary and political landscape. What emerges is a new mode of understanding the delicate balance of interiority and social upheaval, one no longer indebted to the Western canon, politically detached criticisms or Anglo-American hegemony.
What can literature tell us about the making of the modern world?
Examining a range of novelists and critics during the decades of decolonization, the cold war and globalization, Pankaj Mishra uncovers how political intelligence and literary sensibility became gradually disjunct in Anglo-American fiction and criticism, and the consequences that has for what and how we read.
Examining writers from Naipaul to Don DeLillo, Natalia Ginzburg to Edward Said, Mishra explores the twenty-first century decline of Westen cultural promenence. In doing so, he unravels the literary, political and ideological clashes that make up contemporary fiction and reading. Taking its name from Hannah Arendt's Men in Dark Times, this book lays the foundation for radical, internationalist forms of cultural criticism. Like our cultural moment, Mishra traverses borders and languages, asking what kinds of worlds emerge through this literary and political landscape. What emerges is a new mode of understanding the delicate balance of interiority and social upheaval, one no longer indebted to the Western canon, politically detached criticisms or Anglo-American hegemony.
The best selling author of The Age of Anger and The World After Gaza challenges the relationship between literature and politics, Western cultural hegemony and the limits of the written word
What can literature tell us about the making of the modern world?
Examining a range of novelists and cri...
About the author
Pankaj Mishra is the multi-award-winning author of numerous books, most recently The Age of Anger: A History of the Present. 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 the 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 Harper’s.
Pankaj Mishra is the multi-award-winning author of numerous books, most recently The Age of Anger: A History of the Present. 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 Amer...
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