The Indian writer Pankaj Mishra opened the festival in the Nieuwe kerk with the first Winternachten lecture. He spoke about the influence of globalization on literature. The lecture in English and Dutch can be downloaded as an Acrobat Reader Document here.

The growing presence of writers of non-western origin in Europe and America and the rapid process of economic globalization has fed the illusion that societies once were fully closed to each other now participate in an intensive cultural exchange. Pankaj Mishra throws light on the strange fate of literary globalism, which is rendered increasingly powerless in the face of cultural and political chauvinism in Europe and America.

With Pankaj Mishra we placed a highly talented writer into the limelight. He broke through internationally with The Romantics, about an Indian student who is confronted with western customs and ways of thinking in the holy city of Benares. In 2004 the book of essays The Buddha in the World appeared, a quest for the meaning of the Buddha. Recently How to be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond appeared. In it he writes about the changes under pressure of western modernity and about the paradoxes of globalization. Mishra studied commerce at the University of Allahabad and English literature at Nehru University in Delhi. Since the publication of his articles in The New York Review of Books he is a much wanted author of essay-like reviews and political articles. Pankaj Mishra divides his time between London, New Delhi, a village in the Himalayas and Wellesley College in America, where he teaches a number of weeks each year.

Bas Heijne in NRC Handelsblad about Pankaj Mishra's Temptations of the West: "Mishra scrutinizes the strange and sordid phenomenon with a critical view worthy of his master, V.S. Naipaul. [...] He shows that the cosy chit-chat in the West on the violent nature of various religions, first and foremost of course Islam, conceals the true causes of that violence: religious extremism is ultimately always political."

After the lecture Pankaj Mishra was interviewed by literary critic Michaël Zeeman. At the entrance the audience was given the English/Dutch copy of the lecture. The programme is English spoken.

Stichting DOEN supports the Winternachten lecure 2007 because writers from 'the South' get an opportunity here to share their views. Not only with their colleagues at the festival but also with the general public. New insights are brought into being contributing to a social debate in the Netherlands.