Pankaj Mishra (born 1969) is an Indian essayist, novelist and critic. He is known for books that examine how Asian societies have responded to Western power and ideas, notably From the Ruins of Empire (2012) and Age of Anger (2017), and for his long essays in publications such as The New York Review of Books, The Guardian and The New Yorker. He won the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction in 2014.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Pankaj Mishra |
| Born | 1969, Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, India |
| Occupation | Essayist, novelist, critic |
| Education | Allahabad University (B.Com.); Jawaharlal Nehru University (M.A. English Literature) |
| Spouse | Mary Mount |
| Children | 1 |
| Honour | Windham-Campbell Prize (2014) |
| Lives in | London and Mashobra, Himachal Pradesh |
Early Life
Mishra was born in Jhansi; his father was a railway employee. He grew up in small railway towns of North India and studied commerce at Allahabad University and literature at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. In 1992 he moved to Mashobra, a village near Shimla, where he rented a cottage, read widely and began writing reviews for Indian magazines.
Career
His first book, Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India (1995), was a sharp and funny account of the changes that economic liberalisation was bringing to provincial India. As an editor at HarperCollins India he came across the manuscript of Arundhati Roy‘s The God of Small Things and helped it find its international agent. His novel The Romantics (1999), set in Varanasi, won the Los Angeles Times first fiction award.
An End to Suffering (2004) mixed a life of the Buddha with memoir, and Temptations of the West (2006) collected his reporting from Kashmir, Afghanistan, Nepal and Tibet. From the Ruins of Empire traced the thinkers, from Jamal al-Din al-Afghani to Rabindranath Tagore, who shaped Asia’s revolt against Western dominance. Age of Anger: A History of the Present argued that today’s populism and extremism echo the resentments of 19th-century Europe.
He returned to fiction with Run and Hide (2022), about three graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology, and published The World After Gaza in 2025.
Personal Life
Mishra is married to Mary Mount, a London book editor, and they have a daughter. He divides his time between London and Mashobra.
Selected Books
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Pankaj Mishra born?
Pankaj Mishra was born in 1969, Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, India.
What is Pankaj Mishra’s occupation?
Occupation: Essayist, novelist, critic.
Featured image: Pankaj Mishra at the Jaipur Literature Festival, 2025. Photo by Sriya Sarkar, licensed under CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
