Temptations of the West

How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond

Pankaj Mishra

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780374173210
• eBook ISBN: 9781429954648
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Human Geography

A vivid, often surprising account of South Asia today by the author of An End to Suffering
In his new book, Pankaj Mishra brings literary authority and political insight to bear on travels that are at once epic and personal. Traveling in the changing cultures of South Asia, Mishra sees the pressures—the temptations—of Western-style modernity and prosperity, and teases out the paradoxes of globalization. A
visit to Allahabad, birthplace of Jawaharlal Nehru, occasions a brief history of the tumultuous post-independence politics Nehru set in motion. In Kashmir, just after the brutal killing of thirtyfive Sikhs, Mishra sees Muslim guerrillas playing with Sikh village children while the media ponder a (largely irrelevant) visit by President Clinton. And in Tibet Mishra exquisitely parses the situation whereby the Chinese government—officially atheist and strongly opposed to a free Tibet—has discovered that Tibetan Buddhism can "be packaged and sold to tourists."
Temptations of the West is a book concerned with history still in the making—essential reading about a conflicted and rapidly changing region.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• PROLOGUE
• PART ONE
• PART TWO
• PART THREE
• Also by Pankaj Mishra
• About the Author
• Copyright Page