Part 1: Quest. Paris: a concept conjured --
Brussels: the 1928 league against imperialism --
Bandung: the 1955 Afro-Asian conference --
Cairo: the 1961 Afro-Asian women's conference --
Buenos Aires: imagining an economy --
Tehran: cultivating an imagination --
Belgrade: the 1961 non-aligned movement conference --
Havana: the 1966 tricontinental conference. Part 2: Pitfalls. Algiers: the perils of an authoritarian state --
La Paz: released from the barracks --
Bali: death of the communists --
Tawang: war most foul --
Caracas: oil, the devil's excrement --
Arusha: socialism in a hurry. Part 3. Assassinations. New Delhi: the obituary of the Third World --
Kingston: IMF-led globalization --
Singapore: the lure of the Asian road --
Mecca: when culture can be cruel.

The Darker Nations reconstructs the prehistory of the Third World, recalling the now-forgotten 1927 Brussels conclave of the League Against Imperialism, an international effort that brought Albert Einstein together with Jawaharlal, Nehru, Madame Sun Yat-Sen, and hundreds of other far-flung revolutionaries. The narrative then goes on to recount the 1955 conference in Bandung, Indonesia, where twenty-nine African and Asian countries launched the Third World project. Prashad traces the hopes of this decades-long global movement, and delineates its limitations and ultimate downfall in the 1980s."