This Land Is Our Land

A meticulously researched and deeply felt corrective to the public narrative of who today’s migrants are, why they are coming, and what economic and historical forces have propelled them from their homes into faraway lands… This Land Is Our Land reads like an impassioned survey course on migration, laying bare the origins of mass migration in searing clarity… well argued, cathartic and abundantly sourced. * The New York Times Book Review *There are many mic-drop moments and eminently quotable lines… [This Land Is Our Land] is a blistering argument that earns its place in this emotional debate. * Wall Street Journal *Mehta’s book is a brilliant, deliberately political rebuff to the increasingly popular view that immigrants are a problem… It’s a very powerful book, but it also has a wit about it, which makes it very attractive. * Guardian *A plea from the heart for a radical re-evaluation of the West’s treatment of those on the move… Mehta does not pull any punches… [he] knows exactly how to get your attention… and how to have you squirming in your seat. * New Internationalist *An intelligent, well-reasoned case for freedom of movement in an era of walls and fences. * Kirkus Reviews *Written ‘in sorrow and anger’, this is a brilliant and urgently necessary book, eloquently making the case against bigotry and for all of us migrants – what we are not, who we are, and why we deserve to be welcomed, not feared. – Salman RushdieA powerful, passionate, angry, and hopeful cry for sanity and justice by one of our finest writers. Mehta’s heart-felt book is a much-needed and potent antidote to the anti-migrant rhetoric that has grown so threateningly loud of late. Let them come! – Mohsin HamidSuketu Mehta has written a burning indictment of anti-immigrant hypocrisy… Rousing and immensely readable, it is an anthem for all of us. – Jhumpa LahiriMehta has written a compassionate and powerful plea on behalf of migrants that also reveals the deep forces that propel them on their journeys. He exposes the demeaning ways that migrants are treated around the world, and the very human aspirations that may lead them to accept this dehumanization. In so doing, he gives us a searing indictment of those, like Donald Trump, who do so much to make their plight even worse. – Joseph StiglitzThe must-read book for 2019. Suketu Mehta is one of our finest thinkers and writers on the subject of immigration. What begins as a journey that mixes just the right amount of humour, anger and bewilderment at the state of our nation, ends up with a surprising double-shot of hope. This is the rare book that is pragmatic and unsentimental, and yet oddly uplifting. – Gary Shteyngart

Suketu Mehta is the author of Maximum City- Bombay Lost and Found, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award. His work has been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Granta, Harper’s, Time, and GQ. He has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writers’ Award, and an O. Henry Prize. He was born in Calcutta and lives in New York City, where he is an associate professor of journalism at New York University.