LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2018 

'Urgent, profound and extraordinarily timely...throws light on our  contemporary predicament, when the neglected and dispossessed of the  world have suddenly risen up to transform the world we thought we knew'  John Banville

How can we explain the origins of the great  wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable in our close-knit world -  from American 'shooters' and ISIS to Trump, from a rise in vengeful  nationalism across the world to racism and misogyny on social media? In Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra answers our bewilderment by casting his gaze back to the eighteenth century, before leading us to the present.

He  shows that as the world became modern those who were unable to fulfil  its promises - freedom, stability and prosperity - were increasingly  susceptible to demagogues. The many who came late to this new world or  were left, or pushed, behind, reacted in horrifyingly similar ways:  intense hatred of invented enemies, attempts to re-create an imaginary  golden age, and self-empowerment through spectacular violence. It was  from among the ranks of the disaffected that the militants of the 19th  century arose - angry young men who became cultural nationalists in  Germany, messianic revolutionaries in Russia, bellicose chauvinists in  Italy, and anarchist terrorists internationally.

Today, just as  then, the wider embrace of mass politics, technology, and the pursuit of  wealth and individualism has cast many more millions adrift in a  literally demoralized world, uprooted from tradition but still far from  modernity - with the same terrible results

Making startling connections and comparisons, Age of Anger is a book of immense urgency and profound argument. It is a history of our present predicament unlike any other.