Pankaj Mishra and Josep Massot
Reading the world, Looking Forward
Debate
Writer and essayist Pankaj Mishra talks with cultural journalist Josep Massot about the contradictions of a world marked by inequalities, the legacy of colonialism and the difficult understanding between the West and the global South.
Twenty years after his acclaimed literary debut The Romantics (Picador, 1999, published in Catalan by Empúries, 2000), and after writing several essays on the crisis of liberalism and the rise of populism, Pankaj Mishra has returned to the genre of fiction with the novel Run and Hide (published in Spanish by Galaxia Gutenberg, 2022), a powerful story about the individual and collective consequences that material progress can entail. Set in the inequalities generated by the current global order, the novel portrays a generation of Indians who are faced with the effects of both globalization and exclusive nationalism. The writer does so driven by the conviction that the literary imagination is perhaps the best tool to understand our present. What does literature contribute with when we have more questions than answers? What is the cost of progress for those who are left out in the process?
Moderators: Josep Massot
Participants: Pankaj Mishra
Related contents
Pankaj Mishra and Josep Massot
Reading the world, Looking Forward
Writer and essayist Pankaj Mishra talks with cultural journalist Josep Massot about the contradictions of a world marked by inequalities, the legacy of colonialism and the difficult understanding between the West and the global South.
