The World After Gaza: A History

“Courageous and bracing, learned and ethical, rigorous and mind-expanding.” —Naomi Klein

“This profoundly important and urgent book finds Mishra, one of our most intellectually astute and courageous writers, at the peak of his powers.” —Hisham Matar

“A triumphant work of empathy in a polarizing conflict.” —Anand Giridharadas

Named a Best Book of the Month by TIME • Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by The Guardian, Bustle, Foreign Policy, and Literary Hub

An essential reckoning with the genocide in Gaza that reframes our understanding
of the crisis, its historical roots, and the fractured global response

The postwar global order was shaped in response to the Holocaust. It became the benchmark for atrocity and, in the Western imagination, the paradigmatic genocide. But outside of the West, Pankaj Mishra argues, the dominant story of the twentieth century is that of decolonization.

At a moment when the world’s balance of power is shifting, and the Global North no longer commands ultimate authority, it is critically important that we understand how and why the two halves of the world are failing to talk to each other.

As old touchstones and landmarks crumble, only a new history with a sharply different emphasis can reorient us. In this concise, powerful, and pointed treatise, Mishra reckons with the fundamental questions posed by the devastation in Gaza—about whether some lives matter more than others, how identity is constructed, and what the role of the nation-state ought to be. The World After Gaza is an indispensable moral guide to our past, present, and future.