Calling Out Cruelty

October 8, 2025

Calling Out Cruelty

Pankaj Mishra in Conversation with Nesrine Malik and Hisham Matar

The adoration of brute force and exercise of crude power have become hallmarks of governance in both democratic and autocratic settings. A hyper-masculine culture invested in spectacular displays of strength threatens social progress and peace everywhere. What are the insidious ways in which our tolerance for cruelty and Social-Darwinist thinking has increased, and what can we do to foster alternative values such as love and compassion?

Participants

Nesrine Malik

Nesrine Malik is an acclaimed British Sudanese author and journalist known for her wide-ranging commentary on issues of race, identity, politics, and international affairs. She is the author of We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent (2019) and has columns in leading outlets including the Guardian, New York Times, and Washington Post that address topics ranging from Islamophobia and feminism to African politics, with deep insights into the ways colonial and postcolonial legacies shape our contemporary world. Malik received the 2021 Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism.

Hisham Matar

Hisham Matar, author of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir The Return (2016), explores themes of exile, identity, and belonging. Matar was born in New York to Libyan parents, spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo, and has lived most of his life in London. He is also the author of In the Country of Men (2007), shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Anatomy of a Disappearance (2011); and A Month in Siena (2019). His novel My Friends (2024) won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction in 2024, was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has been translated into over 30 languages.

Pankaj Mishra

Pankaj Mishra (moderator) is a renowned Indian author, essayist, and literary critic with a global readership. Two of his prize-winning books, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals who Remade Asia (2012) and Age of Anger: A History of the Present (2017), explore the history of colonialism and its enduring legacies in our contemporary global era. Mishra is also the author of two critically acclaimed novels: The Romantics (1999) and Run and Hide (2022). His columns and essays have appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books, among other outlets. Mishra is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.