This Land Is Our Land

An Immigrant’s Manifesto

By: Suketu Mehta

Narrated by: Vikas Adam

Penguin presents the audio edition of This Land is Our Land by Suketu Mehta, read by Vikas Adam.

An impassioned defence of global immigration from the acclaimed author of Maximum City.

Drawing on his family’s own experience emigrating from India to Britain and America, and years of reporting around the world, Suketu Mehta subjects the worldwide anti-immigrant backlash to withering scrutiny. The West, he argues, is being destroyed not by immigrants but by the fear of immigrants. He juxtaposes the phony narratives of populist ideologues with the ordinary heroism of labourers, nannies and others, from Dubai to New York, and explains why more people are on the move today than ever before. As civil strife and climate change reshape large parts of the planet, it is little surprise that borders have become so porous.

This Land is Our Land also stresses the destructive legacies of colonialism and global inequality on large swathes of the world. When today’s immigrants are asked, ‘Why are you here?’, they can justly respond, ‘We are here because you were there.’ And now that they are here, as Mehta demonstrates, immigrants bring great benefits, enabling countries and communities to flourish.

Impassioned, rigorous, and richly stocked with memorable stories and characters, This Land Is Our Land is a timely and necessary intervention, and literary polemic of the highest order.

©2019 Suketu Mehta (P)2019 Penguin Audio

A timely book for our times

I found myself crying silent tears on page after page. It's heartbreakingly profound and absolutely relevant for the bizarre world we're living in. If the global north doesn't pay for their exploitation of the south over centuries, they won't escape the consequences. The world is interconnected and impossible to divide along racial/religious lines and borders. If the coronavirus pandemic has taught is anything, it's that we're all in the together, and we're all a part of nature.