SMOKE & MIRRORS: An Experience of China

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