New Kings of the World: Fatima Bhutto with Thessaly La Force

The acclaimed author profiles the people of Bollywood, Turkish soap operas, and K-pop who have surpassed the American dominance of global pop culture. 

India produces between 1,500 and 2,000 films a year. Magnificent Century, Turkey's biggest dizi, or soap opera, is watched by upward of 200 million people across 43 countries. Gangnam Style famously became the first YouTube video to garner 1 billion views. New Kings of the World: Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi, and K-pop examines the undeniable surge of a global pop culture that has overtaken the mantel previously held by America. Drawing on interviews, research, and her personal experience of growing up between Syria and Pakistan, Kabul-born author Fatima Bhutto delves into the forces at play behind the new arbiters of mass culture that have emerged from beyond the Western world.  

Bhutto, who is the author of two novels and the memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword, about her father Murtaza Bhutto’s life and assassination, speaks with Thessaly La Force, the features director of T: The New York Times Style Magazine. 

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