This collection of a hundred book reviews, from Sham Lal’s well-known literary column ‘Life and Letters’, gives a vivid idea of how leading social scientists diagnose the ills of modernity. While going into the reasons which led to the collapse of all communist regimes, representing one side of the modernity project, it also explains why the triumphalism of liberalism, standing for the other side, will have a false ring so long as most poor societies are ruled by despots of various stripes and face insuperable difficulties in making even a moderately successful transition to a market economy. The book discusses not only the pathologies of globalism, and consumerism but also of the network society which is creating a new class of pariah states. It also analyses the nature of the changes under way which are infecting contemporary thought with a new virus of nihilism which dismisses all notions of truth, justice and freedom as partial, provisional and highly unstable. The second part of the book deals with the work of over forty poets, playwrights and novelists. Their experiences of the modern world is at a level much deeper than that of discursive thought, and they provide a necessary corrective to the ersatz cheer that is being spread by the proliferating networks of TV channels, and ever more efficient means of mass entertainment and instant communication. In focusing on existential problems, the best spirits of the age seek to restore to the public the tragic vision of life which, despite its being an integral part of all old civilisations, is being blotted out by the increasing fret and fever of modern life.
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