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While men meditate

Asiatic civilisation in the West
by
August 2024, no. 467

The Light of Asia: A history of Western fascination with the East by Christopher Harding

Allen Lane, $65 hb, 463 pp

While men meditate

Asiatic civilisation in the West
by
August 2024, no. 467

The world isn’t quite what it seems. We often imagine the modern world as if it were a halved orange, East clearly separated from West. For centuries, the West has claimed superiority over the Rest, despite knowing little about them, as Edward Said copiously showed in Orientalism (1978). An equally influential proposition in The Clash of Civilisations (1996) was Samuel Huntington’s. He saw the world of Islam as having ‘bloody borders’ and being pitted in conflict with the West over cultural differences. In 1984 (1949), George Orwell imagined two fictional hemispheres in conflict, Eurasia and Eastasia, leaving unresolved the problem of what to do about Oceania.

The Light of Asia: A history of Western fascination with the East

The Light of Asia: A history of Western fascination with the East

by Christopher Harding

Allen Lane, $65 hb, 463 pp

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