SMOKE & MIRRORS: An Experience of China

Winner of the Vodafone-Crossword popular book award, 2008

About Pallavi

Pallavi Aiyar spent more than six years in China writing for the Hindu and the Indian Express newspapers, the only Chinese speaking Indian foreign correspondent to be based in the country. She is the winner of the 2007 Prem Bhatia Memorial Award for excellence in political reporting and analysis, the youngest ever recipient of the prize. Aside from her work as a journalist she has taught news writing to students at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute and served as advisor to the Confederation of Indian Industry on China-related issues.

Pallavi has degrees from St Stephen’s college, Delhi University, Oxford University and the London School of Economics.

She has recently moved to Brussels where she lives with her husband Julio, baby boy Ishaan and two Chinese cats – Soyabean and Tofu.  

 She can be contacted at: pallavi.aiyar@gmail.com

 


Pallavi and Julio

Caramel (today)

 


Caramel (before)

Praise for Smoke and Mirrors

"Smoke and Mirrors is thoroughly entertaining and educative, written with wit and perception in a lively and evocative style. Aiyar’s observations and experiences helped me to better understand China, to which I have been an occasional visitor."
Sonia Gandhi President, Congress Party

"Spurning the usual West-centric perspective on China, Pallavi Aiyar brings a sharp assessing eye to her intractably complex subject. In brisk, often entertaining, prose, she exposes the rich paradoxes and ironies of both 'authoritarian' China and 'democratic' India."
Pankaj Mishra, Author

"We benefit from having Aiyar’s cultural vantage point and nuanced lens. She serves as a better guide to exploring those issues that don’t easily fit into the already hackneyed “Dragon vs. Elephant” cliché. And when it comes to answering that all-important question of how these countries are improving the future for their citizens, who better to help us understand than someone who knows them both with the love of a native and the curiosity of a traveler?"
Jeffrey Wassesrstrom, Foreign Policy

 

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