A Life Beyond Boundaries: A Memoir A Memoir

Anderson, who died late last year, had an intuitive sympathy for nationalism's anti-imperial origins. This was underpinned by his view of history, which was shaped by a rare and unfamiliar perspective. At the time of Imagined Communities' publication, he was a political scientist at the centre of the small community of westerners working on Southeast Asia. Not only his training but also his family background had equipped him, in ways his posthumously published memoir A Life Beyond Boundaries makes clear, to understand nationalism's extraordinary insurgent appeal. Financial Times