PANKAJ MISHRA has made a career of challenging received wisdom. His work, whether fiction, non-fiction or journalism, strives to depict the world, and especially its eastern hemisphere, in fresh and illuminating ways - most often to its other half, the west. Fusing extensive travel and personal experience with intensive research, Mishra peers into the planet's darkest recesses, confronts its most complex cultures and records what he finds. This might be the effect of globalisation on small-town India (Butter Chicken in Ludhiana), Buddha's place in contemporary society (An End to Suffering) or Martin Amis' views on Islam (for The Observer newspaper).
Mishra's most recent book does all of the above, Amis notwithstanding. Temptations of the West narrates Mishra's journeys in Asia to question the largest modern orthodoxy of them all: the fast-changing relationship between east and west.
Given his reputation as a genre-busting intellectual pioneer, it's fitting that Mishra in person should defy expectations. Within the elegant surroundings of his London home (he divides his time between England and India), the 37-year-old seems an unlikely adventurer.
The beard is promisingly rugged, but his loose-fitting Indian clothes can't disguise the slightness of his frame or the mildness of his demeanour. Mishra is polite, thoughtful and unfailingly serious. Despite having a dry wit, he doesn't crack a smile, much less laugh during our conversation. Indeed, it's in conversation that Mishra proves truly adventurous, whether relating his travels or discussing ideas.
Sitting cross-legged on his living room sofa, he fashions elegantly turned phrases that usher thoughts along different avenues until they're dispensed with. Take this meditation on the centrality of personal experience to his work.
'A friend in America said he became a journalist because he couldn't trust the newspapers. I could say the same, except I never really thought of the newspapers as holders of significant analysis. Going to new places and experiencing their realities at first hand has been terribly important. I feel I haven't earned the right to talk about them unless I expose myself to those realities.'
Mishra's motivation for these journeys is a sense of his own ignorance. He cites China as the latest example of this drive towards self-education. 'Here is a neighbouring country [to India] which is going through some of the most extraordinary changes any country has experienced - and I know nothing about it. I had to force myself to go and feel like an utter fool to try to decipher the whole place. I'm still very much a beginner trying to understand a complex society.'