From the author of the novels Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, here is an essential series of dispatches from the East, the West and the In Between. Divided into sections called 'Life', 'Politics' and 'Art', Discontents and its Civilizations collects the very best of Mohsin Hamid's writing on subjects as diverse, but always interrelated, as Pakistan; fatherhood; the death of Osama Bin Laden; the meaning of 'home'; the migrant life; religion and nationality; and the fault lines of our dangerously fragile geopolitical world. Unified by the author's distinctively humane, clear-headed, wise and witty voice, the book makes a compelling case for recognizing our common humanity while relishing our diversity -- both as readers and citizens; for resisting the artificial mono-identities of religion or nationality or race; and for always judging a country or nation by how it treats its minorities, as 'Each individual human being is, after all, a minority of one'.