New Kings of the World

Name: New Kings of the World
Price: 15.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Fatima Bhutto

Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi, and K-Pop

By Fatima Bhutto

Journalist Fatima Bhutto profiles the new arbiters of mass culture: India’s Bollywood films, Turkey's soap operas, and South Korea’s pop music

$15.99

ISBN: 9781733623704
ebook ISBN: 9781733623711
On Sale: September 24, 2019
Pages: 206

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Overview

A vast cultural movement is emerging from outside the Western world. Truly global in its range and allure, it is the biggest challenge yet to Hollywood, McDonald’s, blue jeans, and other aspects of American mass-produced popular culture. This is a book about the new arbiters of mass culture—India’s Bollywood films, Turkey’s soap operas, or dizi, and South Korea’s pop music. Carefully packaging not always secular modernity, combined with traditional values, in urbanized settings, they have created a new global pop culture that strikes a deeper chord than the American version, especially with the many millions who are only just arriving in the modern world and still negotiating its overwhelming changes.

Fatima Bhutto, an indefatigable reporter and vivid writer, profiles Shah Rukh Khan, by many measures the most popular star in the world; goes behind the scenes of Magnificent Century, Turkey’s biggest dizi, watched by more than 200 million people across 43 countries; and travels to South Korea to see how K-Pop started. Bhutto’s book is an important dispatch from a new, multipolar order that is taking form before our eyes.

This book is published with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Praise

“A fascinating book.” Airmail

“A probing look at some of the shifting tides of global culture.... Witty and packed with detail, this is an intercultural shot that should be heard around the world.” Kirkus Reviews starred review

“Bhutto’s desire to constantly question the status quo has made her a scrupulous field reporter.... [She] uses the book to explore how these cultural forms have infiltrated unexpected corners of the world, and steadily become bastions in certain countries.” The Juggernaut

“A delight, a must-read. Fatima Bhutto is the modern renaissance woman: after a searing memoir and an exploration of ‘ISIS brides,’ she turns her diagonal gaze across global pop culture, away from and beyond the lingua franca of English. The result is as effervescent as her subject matter: a hilarious and intelligent understanding of pop as primal need in contemporary life from Peshawar to Istanbul, Seoul to Lima—replete with characters, differences, and common rip-tides—and of the global economy that creates, and manipulates, that need.” Ed Vulliamy

“Bhutto carefully dissects the guts of our popular culture.... Essential to understand the soul of our times.” Ece Temelkuran

“A razor-sharp, intriguing introduction to the various pop phenomena emerging from Asia.” Financial Times

“Shrewdly combining cultural and political analysis, original reporting and a fan’s passions, novelist and memoirist Fatima Bhutto’s New Kings of the World surveys three booming non-Western pop-culture scenes. Examining the continued global popularity of Bollywood and the recent ascent of Turkey’s dizi soap operas and South Korea’s K-Pop, Bhutto finds entertainment crafted to appeal to audiences alienated from America’s pop culture.” Shelf Awareness starred review

“Fatima Bhutto doesn’t miss a thing. From the Bollywood fan clubs of Lima to the refugee camps of northern Lebanon, she records and observes the terrain of global pop with curiosity, compassion, scalpel-sharp smarts, quiet humor, and an unfailing eye for the absurd. New Kings of the World is cultural reporting at its best.” Ben Ehrenreich

“Fatima Bhutto is one of the most stylish, thoughtful writers in the world today. This book will make you gurgle with cultural pleasure.” Johann Hari

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Coverage

The Days Of American Culture Dominance Are Over NPR’s Morning Edition

New book traces rise of popular culture from the East MSNBC’s Morning Joe

Culture is Not Innocent: An interview with Fatima Bhutto PopMatters

🎧 Listen to our Underreported with Nicholas Lemann podcast episodes with Fatima Bhutto

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About the Author

Fatima Bhutto was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and grew up between Syria and Pakistan. She is the author of five previous books of fiction and nonfiction. Her debut novel, The Shadow of the Crescent Moon, was long listed for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction and her memoir about her father's life and assassination, Songs of Blood and Sword, was published to acclaim. Her most recent book is The Runaways, a novel. She graduated from Barnard with a degree in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and has a masters in South Asian Government and politics from SOAS. @fbhutto