In the Damascus of the 1980s, Fatima Bhutto remembers living through a period where she couldn't find bananas as isolationist Syria didn't grow the fruit. At the same time, in Mezzeh, she got her hands on bootleg Madonna albums at a local video rental shop. The anecdote, detailed in her latest book New Kings of the World (Aleph Book Company), is also its foundation. It's not just a chronicling of the 'rise and rise of Eastern pop culture', as its sub-head suggests, but also a reflection on the identities nations like India, Turkey and South Korea build for themselves while carving a niche for soft power.

Here, Bhutto makes the reader very much a part of her research. In Dubai, she meets Shah Rukh Khan, 'dressed like Justin Bieber', at the Palazzo Versace. Analysing the characters he's played—from stalkers to softies—he tells her that he brings a certain kind of goodness to badness. And if you've wondered at what point Khan pondered being a star; it's the moment when Salman Khan's father told him that barbers at the salon asked clients if they wanted a Shah Rukh haircut. Bhutto proceeds to describe her encounters with a Bollywood dance troupe in Lima, Peru, and adventures in Istanbul, before unravelling K-Pop's stronghold. It's safe to say that after a couple of hours and an 140-odd pages, you leave with a pocket-sized account of pop culture, but one that makes sense of the world.