Book Review

Name of the Book : Age of Anger: A History of the Present.
Publisher : Juggernaut Books, New Delhi
Year : 2017.
Pages : 405
Author : Pankaj Mishra
Reviewer : Dr. Mohd Younes Bhat

1. 
   
2. Age of Anger evolves a timely exercise for understanding the problems and issues the contemporary world is confronted with. The problem of arise of ISIL, terrorism, mass consumerism, fluidity in social issues, crude individualism, financial crisis, emergence of new nationalism, civil wars etc. are products of the celebrated western globalized world. The Voltaire would defend the ‘enlightenment project’ with the pretext that it will promise liberty, rationalism, universal commercial society and fortunes to all irrespective of any discrimination. The Rousseau, another eminent European philosopher will contest the Voltaire’s notion. He rejects the notion that European enlightenment will bring continuous human progress rather it has deforms the ‘simple contentment and unselfconscious self love’ in natural man. The author in the book has contextualized this argumentative debate between Voltaire and Rousseau. The author will argue that no enlightenment theory, even liberalism and Marxism will fail to ‘explain the world we are living in’.
3. The author has debated the emergence of authoritarian politics, ethnic violence, violence based on nationalism in the contemporary world. There is now a ‘privatization and socialization’ of violence that one can see on daily basis from in Asia-Africa to Americas. The religious fundamentalism, economic distress, drug mafia, human trafficking and psychological disorder particularly among youth are all the product of the western enlightenment. There is an ‘imperceptible destruction’ of faith and human creativity being happening all over the world. 
4. One of the greatest paradoxes Pankaj Mishra has highlighted is that there is no widespread condemnation happening on any wrong doing in the world. The issues like environmental destruction, tortures, rape, killings, violence against minorities and women are being seen as something normal attribute of modern society. The current political and economic systems have no answer to these obnoxious norms. The world society as given by the enlightenment project has failed to give a substantive moral sense of individualism and freedom. It has ruined the true spirit of humanism and human being. It has brought lust and nudity in the human soul. 
5. The author in the text under review has exemplified all these issue. The beautiful thing about the text is that it makes a meaningful journey of the modern world, which is highly westernized in all its orientations. The text is timely response to all the evils the world is presently confronted with. Moreover, it also suggests that non-western values and norms are highly desirable and relevant in this age of anger. The text is relevant to all those women and men who think about the world and try to understand the substantive cause of the problems we are all facing on daily basis in the globe.