Pankaj Mishra

Pankaj Mishra born 1969 in Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh (North India), is an Indian essayist and novelist. He is particularly notable for his book Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, a sociological study of small-town India, and his writing for the New York Review of Books.

He graduated with a bachelor's degree in commerce from Allahabad University before earning his Master of Arts degree in English literature at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He is the Visiting Fellow for 2007-2008 at the Department of English, University College London, UK.

Writing career

In 1992, he moved to Mashobra, a Himalayan village, where he began to contribute literary essays and reviews to The Indian Review of Books, The India Magazine, and the newspaper The Pioneer. His first book was Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India (1995), a travelogue that described the social and cultural changes in India in the new context of globalization. His novel The Romantics (2000), an ironic tale of people longing for fulfillment in cultures other than their own, was published in eleven European languages and won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum award for first fiction. His recent book An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World (2004) mixes memoir, history, and philosophy while attempting to explore the Buddha's relevance to contemporary times. Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond (2006), describes Mishra's travels through Kashmir, Bollywood, Afghanistan, Tibet, Nepal, and other parts of South and Central Asia.

In 2005, Mishra published an anthology of writing on India, India in Mind (Vintage). His writings have been anthologized in The Picador Book of Journeys (2000), The Vintage Book of Modern Indian Literature (2004), and Away: The Indian Writer as Expatriate (Penguin), among other titles. He has introduced new editions of Rudyard Kipling's Kim (Modern Library), E. M. Forster's A Passage to India (Penguin Classics), and J. G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur (NYRB Classics). He has also introduced two volumes of V. S. Naipaul's essays: The Writer and the World and Literary Occasions.

Mishra writes literary and political essays for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and New Statesman, among other American, British, and Indian publications. His work has also appeared in The Boston Globe, Common Knowledge, the Financial Times, Granta, The Independent, the London Review of Books, n+1, The Nation, Outlook, Poetry, Time, The Times Literary Supplement, Travel + Leisure, and The Washington Post. He divides his time between London and India, and is presently working on a novel.

His book Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond was reviewed by The Economist (1–7 July 2006 issue).

In 2008 he was one of the first authors to take part in the Palestine Festival of Literature. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2008.

Bibliography

Book reviews

• "Impasse in India" The New York Review of Books 54/11 (28 June 2007) : 48-51 [reviews Martha C. Nussbaum, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future]

Books

• An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World
• The Romantics: A Novel
• Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond
• Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India
• India in Mind

External links

• Magazine contains articles written by Pankaj Mishra
• Mishra archive from The New York Review of Books
• Philosopher King by Adam Goodheart—book review in New York Times
• "Pankaj Mishra, Intellectual and Spiritual Vagrant". An interview by Wendy Cheng at Loggernaut.
• Interview with Pankaj Mishra by Sarah Fay for "The Believer" 2007.
• [1]. Report by Pankaj Mishra regarding Kashmir on July 22, 2002 in the UK Guardian newspaper.
• of Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy discussing "India in the World" at the Shanghai International Literary Festival
• Pankaj Mishra on India, Interview
• Pankaj Mishra’s profile at The Guardian