Corre a esconderte

Pankaj Mishra returns to the novel to tell us the story of Arun, born in a small railway town in India from which he always dreamed of escaping. His acceptance into the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, thanks to the immense economic sacrifice of his low-caste parents, is apparently the ticket to leave behind a life full of cruelty and deprivation. At the Institute he meets two students from similar backgrounds who, unlike Arun, possess the will and confidence to break through all social barriers. While they, based on effort, ambition and greed, manage to make their way into the financial circles of London and New York and delve into economic luxury and social elitism in the West, Arun decides to continue his career as a literary translator by taking refuge in a small Himalayan village with his elderly mother. Drawn by a love affair into the sophisticated world of the globalized intelligentsia, Arun abandons his mother, while witnessing the downfall of his friends. And he will have to face the person he himself has become. Run to hide is the story of the moral and emotional cost that must be paid to break with the origins and pursue material progress. And it is at the same time the story of so many millions of human beings who refuse to remain in a situation of humiliation in the countries of the so-called third world, shaken between globalization and the most radical nationalism.