The circle of reason amitav ghosh wiki

Wild Fictions brings together Amitav Ghosh’s extraordinary writing on the subjects that have obsessed him over the last twenty-five years: literature and language; climate change and the environment; human lives, travel, and discoveries. The spaces that we inhabit, and the way in which we occupy them, is a constant thread throughout this striking and expansive collection.

From the significance of the commodification of the clove, the diversity of the mangrove forests in West Bengal and the radical fluidity of multilingualism, Wild Fictions is a powerful refutation of imperial violence, a fascinating exploration of the fictions we weave to absorb history, and a reminder of the importance of empathy.

With the combination of moral passion, intellectual curiosity and literary elegance that defines his writing, Amitav Ghosh makes us understand the world in new, and urgent, ways. Together, the pieces within Wild Fictions chart a course that allow us to heal our relationships and restore a delicate balance with the volatile landscapes to which we all belong.

PRAISE FOR AMITAV GHOSH

Urgent, beautiful and far-reaching . . . it should be essential reading’ TLS on Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis

 

He has surpassed many historians in his ability to synthesise a wealth of research with remarkable intellectual clarity’ The Times on Smoke and Ashes

 

Consistently stimulating’ Guardian on The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

AMITAV GHOSH was born in Calcutta, and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; he studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria. He is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction including the Booker-shortlisted Sea of Poppies, the first novel in the Ibis trilogy, The Glass Palace and The Hungry Tide. His non-fiction writing includes The Great Derangement, The Nutmeg’s Curse and Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories, which was shortlisted for the

Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh (born 1956) is an Indian author, well known for books such as The Shadow Lines, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Hungry Tide, The Circle of Reason, etc. He has done field work in Egypt on the fellaheen village of Lataifa, which resulted in the book In an Antique Land (1993). The Shadow Lines won the Sahitya Akademi Award, India's most prestigious literary prize. Ghosh is currently Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature at the Queens College in the City University of New York.

Quotes

  • Thailand has railways and the British never colonised the country,... In 1885, when the British invaded Burma, the Burmese king was already building railways and telegraphs. These are things Indians could have done themselves.
    • Amitav Ghosh, Interview with "The Week" [1]
  • Hinduism would scarcely be recognizable today, if Vaishnavism had been actively suppressed in the 16th century: other devotional forms may have taken its place, but we cannot know what those would have been. It is a simple fact that contemporary Hinduism as a living practice would not be what it is if it were not for the devotional practices initiated under Mughal rule. The sad irony of the assault on the Babri mosque is that the Hindu fanatics who attacked it destroyed a symbol of the very accommodations that made their own beliefs possible.

From The Shadow Lines (1988)

The Shadow Lines is a novel describes the relatively sedentary life of the book-ish protagonist against the mobile lives in the family of his diplomat uncle. Particularly in focus is his cousin, Ila, and the youngest of his uncles, Tridib. The powerful narrative come to a climax during religious riots in pre-Bangladesh East Pakistan in 1964.

Bengal Gastric

[Digestion problems are endemic in Bengal.

Every now and then a rumble in his bowels would catch him unawares and he would have to sprint for the nearest clean lavatory. This condition was known as Tridib's gastric.

Once

Amitav Ghosh Biography

less than 1 minute read

(1956– ), The Circle of Reason, Midnight's Children, The Shadow Lines, In an Antique Land

Indiannovelist, travel writer, and anthropologist, born in Calcutta, educated at Delhi University and at Oxford. His writings in all genres display his experiences of a variety of cultures. His first novel, The Circle of Reason (1986), was praised by some critics for its spontaneity and vitality, but others found it derivative of Rushdie'sMidnight's Children and the school of magic realism. His second, more original and accomplished novel, The Shadow Lines (1988), chronicles the intertwined destinies of an Indian and an English family over several decades and generations, and is particularly effective in its imagistic and documentary recreations of Ghosh's native Bengal. Though complex in structure and narrative technique, the novel indicates a return by younger Indian authors to a mode more sober than the flamboyant post-modernism of Rushdie and his imitators. In an Antique Land (1992) conflates fictional techniques and historical research in an ambitious evocation of Egypt's richly eclectic past and its increasingly puritanical present. Ghosh's accounts of his travels have appeared in Granta magazine.

Additional topics

Literature Reference: American Literature, English Literature, Classics & Modern FictionEncyclopedia of Literature: Richard Furness Biography to Robert Murray Gilchrist Biography

Amitav Ghosh

Indian writer (born 1956)

For the banker and RBI Governor, see Amitav Ghosh (banker).

Amitav Ghosh (born 11 July 1956) is an Indianwriter. He won the 54th Jnanpith award in 2018, India's highest literary honour. Ghosh's ambitious novels use complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal identity, particularly of the people of India and South Asia. He has written historical fiction and non-fiction works discussing topics such as colonialism and climate change.

Ghosh studied at The Doon School, Dehradun, and earned a doctorate in social anthropology at the University of Oxford. He worked at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi and several academic institutions. His first novel, The Circle of Reason, was published in 1986, which he followed with later fictional works, including The Shadow Lines and The Glass Palace. Between 2004 and 2015, he worked on the Ibis trilogy, which revolves around the build-up and implications of the First Opium War. His non-fiction work includes In an Antique Land (1992) and The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016).

Ghosh holds two Lifetime Achievement awards and four honorary doctorates. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India's highest honours, by the President of India. In 2010, he was a joint winner, along with Margaret Atwood, of a Dan David prize, and in 2011, he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis festival in Montreal. He was the first English-language writer to receive the award. In 2019, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade.

Life

Ghosh was born in Calcutta on 11 July 1956 and was educated at the all-boys boarding school The Doon School in Dehradun. He grew up in India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. His contemporaries at Doon included author Vikram Seth and historian Ram Guha. While at school, he

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