The Age of Anger by Pankaj Mishra

I was so excited to begin reading this book! The title and the blurb both enticed me due to what I believe as the truth about today’s society. However, I found it so difficult to get through because there were many parts that I, unfortunately, found pretty boring. Mishra goes back in time to around the Enlightenment era and begins describing our history since then and how it led to us being in our current ‘age of anger’. The two reasons as to why I found parts of this book to be incredibly dull are:

1) He would use incredibly complex sentences to convey a really simple point. I find this irritating because it sounds obnoxious and arrogant because it doesn’t make the book accessible to everybody, but also because it is highly unnecessary. Please don’t misunderstand me, I believe that specific and complex words add value to texts, however what I dislike is when you have to read a sentence over and over again in order to decipher it and then realising that it was really unimportant.

2) He actually chose, in my opinion, some of the dullest parts of global history. I cannot even think of any examples because I zoned out completely in these sections. If you would like to find out what parts these are, read the book yourself because I have better things to be doing.

I am sure I have made it pretty clear as to why this book was not my favourite in 2018, however, there were some parts which I found particularly interesting. Seeing as I listed my least favourite parts, I feel as though I should also list out my favourites to balance this review out:

1) Mishra is from India so I found his retelling of the Hindu nationalist story particularly interesting because I had never even heard of it. I enjoy learning the political history of different countries because I believe it gives a useful insight to their current political arena and it allows me to have that further depth that I as a Westerner would not have been able to grasp. Therefore, when Mishra speaks of the Hindu nationalists I was highly engaged.

2) Another section was that of the US citizen Tim McVeigh. You may have heard of him because of his terrorist attack against the federal government in the Oklahoma city bombing in 1995. McVeigh was said to be protesting against the federal government because of several misfortunes which he felt had been caused by the government. I found this story particularly interesting because Mishra reveals that whilst McVeigh was on trial he was informed that there was a day-care inside of the part of the building which he bombed. His response to this was that it wasn’t actually that much of a tragedy because all over the world the same thing is happening, often with even worse effects. Mishra leads the reader to think that due to his service in the military, where he witnessed many injustices done by the US. This thought of his was further stimulated whilst in prison because he was in contact with another imprisoned terrorist, however this terrorist was Muslim. Through these conversations McVeigh came to the realisation that they weren’t all that different after all. This section was particularly powerful when it comes to talking about ‘the age of anger’.

3) Finally, I was really absorbed when Mishra spoke of Mazzini and the effect his political work had on Europe and consequently all over the world. Mazzini was one of the leading activists towards Italy’s unification. Being half Italian, this truly intrigued me because I had never learnt about him due to the fact that I have been educated in the UK for my whole life. This section really gets the ball rolling about how we inevitably ended up in this ‘age of anger’, so I would recommend this book for this section alone.

Overall, this books had its ups and downs. When it was good, it was really good but for the most part it was pretty uninteresting. I think that the style of writing really ruined it for me because it was simply too complex for me to understand. Perhaps this was because I am not intelligent enough to understand it? In any case, if any of this inspired you to read this I would be very curious to know what you think so please let me know!