Run and Hide

"Pankaj Mishra transforms a visceral, intimate story of one man’s humble origins into a kaleidoscopic portrait of a society bedazzled by power and wealth—what it means on a human level, and what it costs. Run and Hide is a spectacular, illuminating work of fiction.

—Jennifer Egan, author of Manhattan Beach

"This powerful novel is a searing examination of our recent cultural and political trajectory, a surprising meditation on the role of the writer in times such as ours, a fragile love story, and an unforgiving look at where we are headed. It is, in other words, a book that demands to be read and rewards reading.”

—Mohsin Hamid, author of Exit West

"A wonderfully rich portrait of friends bound by a childhood experience of deprivation, pursuing wildly different ambitions in India, Great Britain, and the United States. Pankaj Mishra writes with great intelligence and lyrical beauty about the perennial struggle for dignity and stability in a rapidly changing world—and how in this process identities are reinvented, reclaimed or renegotiated, sometimes with violent consequences."

—Laila Lalami, author of The Moor's Account

"A profound, extraordinarily written, and devastating exploration of the ways the personal is always already the political, Run and Hide takes the temperature of the 'current moment' and gives us cogent, coherent answers for how we got here. Mishra has imbricated the individual, the primary subject of the novel form, in the dense forces of history and in the process created something new and unforgettable.’

—Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others

"Terrific . . . Elegantly written, incisively observed, and deeply satisfying to read."

—Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire

"Whether writing about a Himalayan village or cosmopolitan London, Pankaj Mishra combines a powerful historical understanding of the contemporary world with psychological insight and a deep feeling for landscape. In Run and Hide, he has created an absolutely new kind of immigrant story—one in which achieving your wildest dreams might mean giving up everything, even once you return home."

—Nell Freudenberger, author of Lost and Wanted and Lucky Girls

"Pankaj Mishra returns to fiction after two decades with a gripping and remarkable novel—his best work yet. Run and Hide has his deepened sense of a class that consolidated its fortunes in this period and then lost its way, of the fragility and tenacity of India’s hidden legacies; and it captures the trajectory of our time through insights and moments that are startling, pure, and have a strange inevitability."

—Amit Chaudhuri, author of Friend of My Youth

"Pankaj Mishra kept us waiting 20 years for a new novel, and it becomes apparent, as soon as you pick up Run and Hide, that time has honed one of our greatest writing talents. The narrative draws you in more keenly than any boxset and the prose shimmers with wisdom. Marvelous."

—Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain