As liberal democracies falter and new global powers rise, prizewinning writer Rana Dasgupta and author and journalist Martin Gelin join us to discuss After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order, Dasgupta’s sweeping history of how the modern nation-state was formed—and why it may now be failing. Ranging from ancient empires to contemporary tech giants, and the return of Chinese power, the book traces how this political model was forged and how it may be coming apart. Together, they’ll explore what comes next when political systems no longer provide security, stability, or a sense of belonging.
About the speakers:
Rana Dasgupta is the author of two novels and a non-fiction portrait of twenty-first century Delhi. Dasgupta was a visiting fellow in the humanities at Princeton University and has taught as a visiting lecturer at Brown University. His essays have been published in the Guardian, New Statesman, and BBC.com, and his writing has won the Windham Campbell Prize, the Commonwealth Prize, and the Ryszard Kapuściński Award. He lives in Delhi.
Martin Gelin is a Swedish-American journalist and the author of seven books on American politics, foreign affairs and culture. His latest book, Rules of Attraction: Why Soft Power Matters in Hard Times, will be published in English in 2026. He has written for the Guardian, Foreign Policy, Washington Post, and New York Magazine. After two decades in New York, he now lives in Paris, where he is also the president of the Anglo-American Press Association, the oldest foreign press organization in France.
