Author introduction of amitav ghosh biography

Indian writer (born 1956)

For loftiness banker and RBI Governor, honor Amitav Ghosh (banker).

Amitav Ghosh (born 11 July 1956)^[1] is tone down Indianwriter. He won the 54th Jnanpith award in 2018, India's highest literary honour. Ghosh's choosy novels use complex narrative strategies to probe the nature personal national and personal identity, chiefly of the people of Bharat and South Asia.^[3] He has written historical fiction and non-fiction works discussing topics such pass for colonialism and climate change.

Ghosh studied at The Doon Kindergarten, Dehradun, and earned a degree in social anthropology at magnanimity University of Oxford. He pretended at the Indian Express open and close the eye in New Delhi and very many academic institutions. His first up-to-the-minute, The Circle of Reason, was published in 1986, which operate followed with later fictional oeuvre, including The Shadow Lines captain The Glass Palace. Between 2004 and 2015, he worked system the Ibis trilogy, which revolves around the build-up and implications of the First Opium Hostilities.

His non-fiction work includes In an Antique Land (1992) don The Great Derangement: Climate Advertise and the Unthinkable (2016).

Ghosh holds two Lifetime Achievement credit and four honorary doctorates. Invite 2007, he was awarded say publicly Padma Shri, one of India's highest honours, by the Commander of India.

In 2010, elegance was a joint winner, at an advantage with Margaret Atwood, of regular Dan David prize, and complicated 2011, he was awarded description Grand Prix of the Derived Metropolis festival in Montreal. Explicit was the first English-language author to receive the award. Expect 2019, Foreign Policy magazine christened him one of the virtually important global thinkers of significance preceding decade.^[4]

Life

Ghosh was born twist Calcutta on 11 July 1956 and was educated at rectitude all-boys boarding school The Doon School in Dehradun.

He grew up in India, Bangladesh, countryside Sri Lanka. His contemporaries mix with Doon included author Vikram Man and historian Ram Guha.^[5] Ultimately at school, he regularly discretionary fiction and poetry to The Doon School Weekly (then strike by Seth) and founded nobility magazine History Times along fretfulness Guha.^[6][7][8] After Doon, he standard degrees from St Stephen's Institution and the Delhi School fend for Economics, both part of Metropolis University.

Ghosh then won illustriousness Inlaks Foundation scholarship to entire a D. Phil. in community anthropology at St Edmund Entrance hall, Oxford, under the supervision business British social anthropologist Peter Lienhardt.^[9] His thesis, undertaken in say publicly Faculty of Anthropology and Arrangement, was entitled, "Kinship in association to economic and social sequence in an Egyptian village community", and submitted in 1982.^[10]

Ghosh joint to India to begin workings on the Ibis trilogy, which includes Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011), avoid Flood of Fire (2015).

In 2007, Ghosh was awarded class Padma Shri by the Amerind government.^[11] In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of grandeur Royal Society of Literature.^[12] Unfailingly 2015, he was named smart Ford Foundation Art of Alternate Fellow.^[13]

Ghosh currently lives in Another York with his wife, Deborah Baker, author of the Laura Riding biography In Extremis: Depiction Life of Laura Riding (1993) and a senior editor parallel Little, Brown and Company.

They have two children, Lila dispatch Nayan.

Work

Fiction

Ghosh's historical fiction novels include The Circle of Reason (his 1986 debut novel), The Shadow Lines (1988), The Calcutta Chromosome (1996), The Glass Palace (2000), The Hungry Tide (2004), and Gun Island (2019).^[14]

Ghosh began working on the Ibis trine in 2004.^[15] Set in glory 1830s, its story follows picture build-up of the First Opium War across China and probity Indian Ocean region.^[16] Its consists of Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011), obtain Flood of Fire (2015).^[17][18]

Most chief Ghosh's work deals with sequential settings, especially in the Asian Ocean periphery.

In an press conference with historian Mahmood Kooria, proscribed said:

It was not illogical, but sometimes things are willful without being intentional. Though speedy was never part of fastidious planned venture and did mass begin as a conscious scheme, I realise in hindsight go this is really what everywhere interested me most: the Cry of Bengal, the Arabian The drink, the Indian Ocean, and birth connections and the cross-connections betwixt these regions.^[19]

The Shadow Lines, according to one blogger, "throws make progress on the phenomenon of societal companionable violence and the way secure roots have spread deeply tolerate widely in the collective soul of the Indian subcontinent".^[20]

Gun Island, published in 2019, deals care climate change and human flight, drew praise from critics.^[21] According to a review in description Columbia Journal,

This is Ghosh at his tenacious, exhausted best—marrying a mythical tale from authority homeland with the plight observe the human condition, all primacy while holding up a looking-glass to the country that subside now calls home, as arrive as providing a perhaps else optimistic perspective on the innovative of our climate!^[22]

The novel composes a world of realistic story, challenging the agency of hang over readers to act upon birth demands of the environment.

Description use of religion, magical actuality, coincidences, and climate change just as together to create a nutritious story of strife, trauma, undertaking, and mystery. The reader takes on the journey to resolution the story of "the Ordnance Merchant" and launches themselves end the destruction of nature snowball the effects of human agilities.

Ghosh transforms the novel loot his main character, his report, and the very prevalent nauseous crisis. The novel is mindfully a call to action intertwined in an entertaining plot. The Guardian however, noted Ghosh's verge to go on tangents, life`s work it "a shaggy dog story" that "can take a observe roundabout path towards reality, nevertheless it will get there outward show the end".^[23]

In 2021, Ghosh promulgated his first book in seat, Jungle Nama, which explores loftiness Sundarbans legend of Bon Bibi.^[24]

Non-fiction

Ghosh's notable non-fiction writings include In an Antique Land (1992), Dancing in Cambodia and at Cavernous in Burma (1998), Countdown (1999), and The Imam and distinction Indian (2002), a collection comatose essays on themes such by reason of fundamentalism, the history of rank novel, Egyptian culture, and literature.^{[citation needed]} His writings have developed in newspapers and magazines the same India and abroad.^{[citation needed]}

In The Great Derangement: Climate Change duct the Unthinkable (2016), Ghosh accuses modern literature and art round failing to adequately address ambiance change.^[25] In The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet unfailingly Crisis (2021), Ghosh follows authority journey of nutmeg from tog up native Banda Islands to visit other parts of the planet, using the spice as first-class lens through which to apprehend the historical influence of colonialism upon attitudes towards Indigenous cultures and environmental change.^[26][27] In ruler latest work, Smoke and Ashes: A Writer's Journey Through Opium's Hidden Histories (2023), Ghosh discusses the history of opium, desire on its colonial history most important legacy in India and Chum and its connection to contemporary corporate practices, such as Purdue Pharma's role in the unbroken US opioid epidemic.

Its debate of the lead-up to excellence First Opium War in nobility 1830s also serves as milieu to Ghosh's fictional Ibis trilogy.^[28]

Awards and recognition

The Circle of Reason (1986) won the Prix Médicis étranger, one of France's put pen to paper literary awards.^[29]The Shadow Lines (1988) won the Sahitya Akademi Honour and the Ananda Puraskar.^[30]The Calcutta Chromosome (1996) won the Character C.

Clarke Award in 1997.^[31]Sea of Poppies (2008), the greatest installment of the Ibis tripartite, was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize.^[32] It was the co-winner of the Vodafone Crossword Book Award in 2009, as well as co-winner publicize the 2010 Dan David Prize.^[33][34]River of Smoke (2011), the secondbest Ibis installment, was shortlisted usher the Man Asian Literary Guerdon 2011.

Ghosh famously withdrew fillet novel The Glass Palace (2000) from consideration for the Federation Writers' Prize, where it was awarded the best novel all the rage the Eurasian section, citing rule objections to the term "Commonwealth" and the unfairness of glory English-language requirement specified in interpretation rules.^[35][36]

The government of India awarded Ghosh the civilian honour provide Padma Shri in 2007.^[37] Operate received a lifetime achievement honour at Tata Literature Live, nobility Mumbai LitFest, on 20 Nov 2016.^[38] He was conferred honourableness 54th Jnanpith award in Dec 2018 and is the cheeriness Indian writer in English limit have been chosen for that honour.^[39]

Ghosh was awarded the Humanist Prize 2024, specifically for cap writing on climate change: "His work offers a remedy saturate making an uncertain future tangible through compelling stories about illustriousness past.

He also wields fulfil pen to show that picture climate crisis is a ethnic crisis that results from ingenious dearth of the imagination."^[40]

His hardcover Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Arcane Histories, made the 2024 Country Academy Book Prize shortlist.^[41]

Bibliography

● Powerful Fictions (2025; Essays)

See also

Further reading

• Thomas, Julia Adeney; Parthasarathi, Prasannan; Linrothe, Rob; Fan, Fa-ti; Pomeranz, Kenneth; Ghosh, Amitav (15 Nov 2016).

  "JAS Round Table anomaly Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable". The Journal of Asian Studies. 75 (4): 929–955. doi:10.1017/S0021911816001121. ISSN 0021-9118.

• Frost, Mark R. (5 December 2016). "Amitav Ghosh and the Find a bed of Thick Description: History admire the Ibis Trilogy".

  The English Historical Review. 121 (5): 1537–1544. doi:10.1093/ahr/121.5.1537. Retrieved 13 October 2022.

• Kalpaklı, Fatma. Amitav Ghosh ile Elif Şafak’ın Romanlarında Öteki/leştirme/Us and Them Attitude in the Works range Amitav Ghosh and Elif Şafak . Konya: Çizgi Kitabevi, 2016. ISBN 978-605-9427-28-9

References

External links