Mishra, the Indian essayist and novelist, shows how, like their European and American counterparts, Asian intellectuals of the 19th and 20th centuries responded to the colonial encounter by constructing a binary opposition between East and West. From Ottoman Turkey to Meiji Japan, writers struggled in the face of the humiliating experience of subjugation. The superior technology and organization of the imperial powers were self-evident. What was the correct response? Could new innovations and modes of production be grafted onto existing social structures, or did cherished ways of life and thought have to be abandoned? The question of what to accept, what to adapt and what to reject from “the West” remains central in contemporary Asian politics; “From the Ruins of Empire” reveals much — not just about why a Chinese artist would erect replicas of stolen national treasures in a Western city, but about the ideological underpinnings of the Iranian revolution and India’s dogged pursuit of scientific and technical excellence.