Divided Critics, Divided World: What the Reviews of Pankaj Mishra’s Seminal Book ‘The World After Gaza’ Tell Us

When Penguin Random House published Pankaj Mishra’s “The World After Gaza” in February 2025, they hailed it as “an indispensable moral guide to our past, present, and future.” Three months later, the book has become something else as well: a mirror reflecting the very global divisions it seeks to diagnose.

In the oak-paneled offices of literary journals and the fluorescent-lit newsrooms of major papers, Mishra’s slim volume has ignited a firestorm that crosses continents, political affiliations, and worldviews. The critical response has been as fractured as the world Mishra describes—a world cleaved between what he calls the Global North’s “triumphant account of victory over totalitarianism” and the Global South’s “hopeful vision of racial equality and freedom from colonial rule.”

“It’s rare to see reviews so diametrically opposed,” notes literary critic Sarah Chen. “They’re not just disagreeing about whether the book is good—they’re disagreeing about reality itself.”

In the pages of Kirkus Reviews, Mishra’s work is praised as “an exhaustively sourced plea for historical literacy” that offers “a clear-eyed look at the Holocaust as justification for Israel’s wars.” Art critic Mark Rappolt goes further, calling it “brave writing that demands to be read” in his review for Art Review.

Yet across the Atlantic, in the Wall Street Journal, columnist Tunku Varadarajan begins his assessment with six damning words: “This is a review of a repugnant book.” He condemns Mishra’s work as dangerous, labeling it part of a “Jew-phobic hoax” that wrongly connects Palestinian struggles with broader racial justice movements.

The gap between these perspectives seems unbridgeable. Where Rappolt sees Mishra weaving together the Holocaust, the Nakba, and India’s partition as parallel products of “imperialist skullduggery,” Varadarajan sees dangerous relativism that minimizes unique Jewish suffering and history.

The Man Behind the Storm

At the center of this maelstrom stands Mishra himself, a figure whose personal journey mirrors the complexities of his subject matter. As Ben Hubbard notes in The New York Times, Mishra grew up admiring Israel in a Hindu nationalist household in India, even hanging a photo of Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan in his bedroom.

That admiration turned to critique after a transformative 2008 visit to the West Bank, where Mishra witnessed what he describes as Palestinian suffering under Israeli military control. “I was unnerved,” Mishra writes, “that their persecutors were the West’s former victims.” He returned home with what he calls an “awakened, affronted sensibility.”

This biographical context appears in several reviews, though interpreted differently. For supportive critics, it humanizes Mishra’s intellectual evolution. For detractors, it reveals ideological bias.

The geographic distribution of praise and criticism is itself telling. Reviews from Europe and parts of Asia have been largely positive, while American publications show greater polarization, with coastal outlets offering measured assessments and conservative publications delivering scathing critiques.

Perhaps most striking is the book’s pessimistic conclusion, which several reviewers highlight. Mishra ultimately predicts that Israel will eventually expel Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza—a dark forecast that has taken on new resonance following recent political developments.

“The reception of Mishra’s book follows familiar geopolitical fault lines,” explains media analyst Ravi Menon. “It’s been embraced in parts of the world that have experienced colonization and rejected in centers of traditional Western power—exactly the division Mishra describes in his work.”

October 7th and Its Aftermath

Many of the disagreements center on Mishra’s treatment of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Varadarajan condemns Mishra for never using the word “terrorists” to describe Hamas fighters, while Ben Hubbard notes in the Times that Mishra “spends little time discussing the Oct. 7 attack and how it heightened Israel’s sense of vulnerability.”

In contrast, supportive reviews focus on Mishra’s broader historical arguments about colonization, decolonization, and how traumatic memories are deployed politically. They see his work as attempting to contextualize—not justify—violence on both sides.

In university settings, “The World After Gaza” has found a more consistently positive reception, particularly in departments focused on postcolonial studies, critical race theory, and Middle Eastern history.

“Mishra’s framework resonates with recent academic trends that seek to connect seemingly disparate histories of oppression,” says Dr. Leila Hassan, who teaches comparative literature at Columbia University. “But that same approach triggers strong resistance from those who see certain historical events as unique and incomparable.”

Perhaps most striking is the book’s pessimistic conclusion, which several reviewers highlight. Mishra ultimately predicts that Israel will eventually expel Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza—a dark forecast that has taken on new resonance following recent political developments.

“His pessimism seems to outstrip his optimism,” writes Hubbard in the Times, questioning whether Mishra’s faith in decolonization as “an unstoppable revolution” matches his bleak conclusions.

In this heated environment, the reviews themselves have become primary texts worth analyzing—not just assessments of Mishra’s arguments but extensions of the very debate he documents.

“We’re watching in real time as critics perform exactly the division Mishra describes,” notes cultural critic James Wilson. “Some see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict primarily through the lens of the Holocaust and Jewish suffering; others see it primarily through the lens of colonization and Indigenous rights. And rarely do these perspectives meaningfully engage with each other.”

As “The World After Gaza” continues to spark debate, it’s clear that its impact will extend far beyond literary circles. The book and its polarized reception will likely serve as a case study for future scholars examining how deeply held historical narratives shape contemporary political discourse.

Whether readers ultimately find Mishra’s arguments persuasive or problematic, one prediction seems safe: the divided reception of “The World After Gaza” confirms its central thesis about a world struggling—and often failing—to find common moral ground across the North-South divide.

In that sense, even Mishra’s harshest critics are, unwittingly, proving his point.