Amitava Kumar is Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College. He is the author of A Matter of Rats: A Short Biography of Patna, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, and Nobody Does the Right Thing, all also published by Duke University Press.
The interconnected world may be a cliche, but we don't often see its real connections. Amitava Kumar illuminates many of them here with his signature mix of unappeasable curiosity, cool skepticism, and shrewd intelligence. --Pankaj Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia