Random House
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"Courageous and bracing, learned and ethical, rigorous and mind-expanding.” —Naomi Klein
“This profoundly important and urgent book finds Mishra, one of our most intellectually astute and courageous writers, at the peak of his powers.” —Hisham Matar
“A triumphant work of empathy in a polarizing conflict.” —Anand Giridharadas
Named a Best Book of the Month by TIME • Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by The Guardian, Bustle, Foreign Policy, and Literary Hub
From one of our foremost public intellectuals, an essential reckoning with the war in Gaza that reframes our understanding of the ongoing conflict, its historical roots, and the fractured global response
The postwar global order was in many ways shaped in response to the Holocaust. That event became the benchmark for atrocity, and, in the Western imagination, the paradigmatic genocide. Its memory orients so much of our thinking, and crucially, forms the basic justification for Israel’s right first to establish itself and then to defend itself. But in many parts of the world, ravaged by other conflicts and experiences of mass slaughter, the Holocaust’s singularity is not always taken for granted, even when its hideous atrocity is. Outside of the West, Pankaj Mishra argues, the dominant story of the twentieth century is that of decolonization.
The World After Gaza takes the current war, and the polarized reaction to it, as the starting point for a broad reevaluation of two competing narratives of the last century: the Global North’s triumphant account of victory over totalitarianism and the spread of liberal capitalism, and the Global South’s hopeful vision of racial equality and freedom from colonial rule. At a moment when the world’s balance of power is shifting, and the Global North no longer commands ultimate authority, it is critically important that we understand how and why the two halves of the world are failing to talk to each other.
As old touchstones and landmarks crumble, only a new history with a sharply different emphasis can reorient us to the world and worldviews now emerging into the light. In this concise, powerful, and pointed treatise, Mishra reckons with the fundamental questions posed by our present crisis — about whether some lives matter more than others, how identity is constructed, and what the role of the nation-state ought to be. The World After Gaza is an indispensable moral guide to our past, present, and future.
Reviews
“Mishra, who has employed his crystalline prose in novels and nonfiction alike, methodically unpacks the 'extensive moral breakdown' that preceded what he describes as 'the blithe slaughter of innocents in Gaza.' . . . At heart, this is an exhaustively sourced plea for historical literacy that opens up what Mishra calls 'a broader vista of human fraternity and solidarity' and recognizes that across the globe, people victimized by 'historical mass crimes of genocide, slavery and racist imperialism' wonder why 'their own holocausts . . . have not been much regarded in history.' . . . A clear-eyed look at the Holocaust as justification for Israel’s wars.” —Kirkus
“In this urgent book, Mishra grapples with the inexplicable spectacle of stone-faced Western elites ignoring, and indeed justifying, the slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. Mishra reflects on the supposedly universal consensus that emerged from the Holocaust, as well as his own early sympathies for Israel, as he expounds on the terrible toll of this passivity in the face of atrocity.” —Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
“Guided by a determination to find an exit from the loop of endlessly repeating atrocities, Mishra leads readers on a search for meaning in modern history’s most depraved episodes. This is a rare text: courageous and bracing, learned and ethical, rigorous and mind-expanding.” —Naomi Klein, author of Doppelganger
“This profoundly important and urgent book finds Mishra, one of our most intellectually astute and courageous writers, at the peak of his powers. His outrage is hard to ignore. But at the center of this urgent book is a humane inquiry into what suffering can make us do, and he leaves us with the troubling question of what world will we find after Gaza.” —Hisham Matar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return and My Friends
About the Author
- Publisher : Random House, 2025
- Language : English
- Paperback : 304 pages
- ISBN-13 979-8217058891
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