The Darker Nations: A Biography of the Short-Lived Third World

This book is a paradigm-shifting history of both a utopian concept and global movement–the idea of the Third World. The Darker Nations traces the intellectual origins and the political history of the attempt to knit together the world’s impoverished countries in opposition to the United States and Soviet spheres of influences in the decades following World War II, as nation after nation across Asia, Africa and South America gained political independence from colonial rule. Traversing continents, Vijay Prashad’s fascinating narrative takes us from the birth of postcolonial nations after World War II to the down fall and corruption of nationalist regimes. A break through book of cutting-edge scholarship, it includes vivid portraits of third world giants like Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt’s Nasser, and Indonesia’s Sukarno, as well as scores of extraordinary but now-forgotten intellectual, artists, and freedom fighters. The Darker Nations restores to memory the vibrant though flawed idea of the Third World, whose demise, Prashad ultimately argues, has produced a much impoverished international political arena.