A Greater Asia - NYTimes.com In the book "From the Ruins of Empire," Indian essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra, "shows how, like their European and American counterparts, Asian intellectuals of the 19th and 20th centuries responded to the colonial encounter by constructing a binary opposition between East and West," Hari Kunzru wrote in the Sunday Review section of The New York Times. "The question of what to accept, what to adapt and what to reject from 'the West' remains central in contemporary Asian politics," Mr. Kunzru wrote. The book sheds light "not just about why a Chinese artist would erect replicas of stolen national treasures in a Western city, but about the ideological underpinnings of the Iranian revolution and India's dogged pursuit of scientific and technical excellence." The author "tells this story through the biographies of three public intellectuals: the itinerant Persian-born agitator Jamal al-Din al-Afghani; the Chinese reformer Liang Qichao;" and Indian poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Through his "astute and entertaining synthesis of these neglected histories" Mishra substantiates his claim that "the central event of the last century for the majority of the world's population was the intellectual and political awakening of Asia." Read the full review.