China is at an historical point where tradition and modernity, communism and capitalism, chaos and control, freedom and dissent, amongst other dualities rub up against each other on a daily basis. In order to remain in power through this period of fundamental and far-reaching transformations, the Chinese Communist Party must walk a tightrope, balancing and mediating the conflicting needs, desires and aspirations of its various constituencies. For Chinese people in general as well this is a challenging period requiring enormous adjustments both psychologically and materially to rapidly altering circumstances.

Pallavi Aiyar's Smoke and Mirrors spotlights these contradictions as well as the different strategies that the Party and the people deploy to manage this process of negotiation. It also aims at portraying China through Indian eyes and vice versa; a mirroring that shows up the failings and achievements of both civilizations--which are in many ways each other's alter ego. It takes a look at how people from the two sides of the Himalayas perceive each other; their prejudices and miscomprehensions as well as their similarities and shared circumstances. A combination of travelogue, reportage and memoir, this warm-hearted book is the first ever written by a Mandarin-speaking Indian foreign correspondent on China.

Pallavi Aiyar is the Beijing-based China correspondent for The Hindu group of publications. A Chinese speaker she has lived in and reported from China for over five years. She is the winner of the 2007 Prem Bhatia Memorial Award for excellence in political reporting and analysis, the youngest ever recipient of the prize. She was also awarded a Reuters Foundation Fellowship for study at Oxford in the same year.