Pankaj Mishra FRSL (born 9 February 1969) is an Indian essayist, novelist, and socialist.

His non-fiction works include Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond, along with From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia, and A Great Clamour: Encounters with China and Its Neighbours, and he has published two novels.

His writings have led to a number of controversies, including disputes with Salil Tripathi, Niall Ferguson and Jordan Peterson.

His father was AK Mishra a PWI in Indian railway and trade unionist after his family had been left impoverished by post-independence land redistribution.

His novel The Romantics (2000), an ironic tale of people longing for fulfilment in cultures other than their own, was published in 11 European languages and won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum award for first fiction.

Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond (2006), describes Mishra's travels through Kashmir, Bollywood, Afghanistan, Tibet, Nepal, and other parts of South and Central Asia.

[2] In an article published on 19 March 2018 in the New York Review of Books titled "Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism", Mishra wrote that Canadian clinical psychologist and author Jordan Peterson's activities with Charles Joseph, a native member of the coastal Pacific Kwakwakaʼwakw tribe in Canada, "...may seem the latest in a long line of eggheads pretentiously but harmlessly romancing the noble savage.

[22] She is daughter of the writer Sir Ferdinand Mount, 3rd Baronet, and a cousin of former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron.