The Light of Asia

This rich and enjoyable book recounts the tangled, dynamic encounters through which Asia has influenced Europe and North America over centuries.

From the time of the ancient Greeks onwards, the West's relationship with Asia consisted for the most part of outrageous tales of strange beasts and monsters, of silk and spices shipped over vast distances, and an uneasy sense of unknowable empires fantastically far away. By the twentieth century, much of Asia might have come under Western rule after centuries of warfare, but its intellectual, artistic, and spiritual influence was fighting back.

The Light of Asia is a wonderfully varied and entertaining history of the many ways in which Asia has shaped European and North American culture over centuries of tangled, dynamic encounters, and the central importance of this vexed, often confused relationship. From Marco Polo onwards, Asia has been both a source of genuine fascination and equally genuine failures of comprehension. China, India, and Japan were all acknowledged to be both great civilisations and, in crude ways, seen as superseded by the West. From Chicago to Calcutta, and from antiquity to the new millennium, this is a rich, involving story of misunderstandings and sincere connection, of inspiration and falsehood, of geniuses, adventurers, and con-men.

Christopher Harding's captivating gallery of people and places celebrates Asia's impact on the West in all its variety.