“There are no coincidences,” a character in Amitav Ghosh’s new novel declares, “only synchronicities.” Chances are, if you happen to be reading Ghost Eye right now, you are or have been willy nilly dwelling in a state of consciousness in which you are acutely aware of realities which traditionally “science” or “rationality” cannot explain.
Last year, Amitav Ghosh regaled his readers with a book of non-fiction comprising essays primarily focusing on environment and climate change and called it Wild Fictions.
Amitav Ghosh is one of the most celebrated contemporary authors, renowned for his deeply insightful and thought-provoking works that explore themes of history, culture, colonialism, climate change and the interconnectedness of human and natural worlds.
In a session titled “The Resource Curse”, Ghosh, known for his works on colonialism and climate change, and Chaudhuri, a literary scholar and professor emeritus at Jadavpur University, delved into the complexities of the Sunderbans, a mangrove delta spanning India and Bangladesh.
"For centuries, the dominant global powers have seen Earth -- its plants, its animals, and its non-white peoples -- as brute objects: mute, without agency, and available for the taking and killing."
Gun Island is engrossing and almost reads like a whodunit, thus reiterating Ghosh's talent as a master story teller and a craftsman of words. It is amazing how he can thread his ideas about climate change, ecological disasters, crossborder migration and global movement of refugees in search of a better life elsewhere all together in his narrative... A review
Ghosh became the first Indian writer in English to be conferred the Jnanpith Award by former Governor of West Bengal Gopalkrishna Gandhi on Wednesday.
He is also credited for bringing in the age of modern Indian playwrighting in Kannada, just as Badal Sarkar did in Bengali, Vijay Tendulkar in Marathi and Mohan Rakesh in Hindi.
The statement has been signed by over 200 writers from across India with names such as Arundhati Roy, Amitav Ghosh, Jerry Pinto, Romila Thapar and Girish Karnad as part of it.
Critically-acclaimed director Shekhar Kapur will direct a TV series based on Ibis Trilogy, a series of historical novels by Amitav Ghosh.
