The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery

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The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery

3.41 of 5 stars 3.41 · rating details · 1,825 ratings · 181 reviews

From Victorian lndia to near-future New York, The Calcutta Chromosome takes readers on a wondrous journey through time as a computer programmer trapped in a mind-numbing job hits upon a curious item that will forever change his life. When Antar discovers the battered I.D. card of a long-lost acquaintance, he is suddenly drawn into a spellbinding adventure across centuries...more

Paperback, 320 pages

Published January 23rd 2001 by Harper Perennial (first published 1995)

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Apr 16, 2013 Riku Sayuj rated it 4 of 5 stars

What was that Mr. Ghosh? An attempt at a new genre? A bold stroke at creating a uniquely Indian view on science and how it would have been if science research was driven by mystics and cults? A spi-sci-fi book?

(view spoiler) It is a pity that all the science falls flat the moment it wanders beyond the known and the pr...more

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Feb 05, 2008 Preeta rated it 4 of 5 stars

Just completing the book, my mind is left swirling with unanswered questions but an implicit sense of understanding that there is something beneath this story about malaria and the scientist Ross across the past, present, and future. Strikingly, the known facts about Ross are presented in a new light - making it a mystery about his discovery - it made me think how all flashes of brilliance are mysterious, like how Archimedes said "eureka!" when he stepped into a bath and noticed the water level...more

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Aug 19, 2007 Sara-Maria Sorentino rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: post-suvin-fantasy

A mystery/thriller/scifi/postcolonial novel? If I hadn’t read Ghosh before and felt so comfortably trusting with him I might have stopped reading this early on. But I really liked what (I think?) I got out of this book. I’m not actually sure what that was but I had bodily chills for about an hour after finishing it. The striking epistemological/ontological theme developed slowly but not even remotely in full (and that’s the brilliance) is this: a counter-science—‘starting with the idea that know...more

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Jul 26, 2008 Juha rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who like a bit weird mysteries.

Shelves: fiction, asia, india

The Calcutta Chromosome is impossible to categorise. It is partly a thriller, partly science fiction, partly (imaginary) medical history. It moves back and forth in time and in place, from colonial India to near-future USA. After a slow start, the book absorbs the reader in a confusing and multi-layered story. Ghosh writes in an engaging manner, with lots of humour. The protagonist, Murugan, grows on you and you start to sympathise with the poor man's quest. For sure, this book is not for everyo...more

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Oct 07, 2012 Anandadivya rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was one of those books which has been in my book shelf for quite long but didn't take to serious reading until yesterday. Besides being in the top of my book stack, I could not think of any other reason to pick this particular book to kill my time. I was down with fever and too tired to move around. A book is the company in such situations and what a company it turned out to be.
'Calcutta Chromosome' was racy and fast. I can vouch for this fact having finished this book in one go. It looks l...more

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Oct 01, 2012 Sowmya rated it 3 of 5 stars

A very interesting read, and surprisingly not what you'd expect from writer Ghosh, especially if you've read most of his books like me. It's sort of a scientific thriller, but then again, is it?

When, in the course of his daily routine, Ant discovers something he thought was long put to rest, it leads to the uncovering of his ex-colleague Murugan's unbelievable saga as he traveled through Calcutta, chasing a hunch.

Murugan, who got himself transferred to Calcutta hoping to locate the special 'chr...more

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Apr 19, 2012 Shamim E. Haque rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I think this is a book which has an excellent plot and the mystery is truly gripping. I particularly enjoyed the section where author Phulboni experiences the apparition of Lakhan and the station master at the ghost rail station of Renupur. The narrative was so realistic and rich that I almost found myself in the shoes of Phulboni. I think the computer tricks and overstated computing technology that is featured in this novel makes it slightly less credible, especially today when network computin...more

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Sep 11, 2011 Jignesh Shah rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book has to be among the strangest novels I've read. The book starts out slow, in an odd setting with unusual characters. The plot swirls around an unexpected premise - that the documented history of who cracked the malaria puzzle in 1898 is dubious. My initial reaction to this premise was - who cares? But then the plot kept getting more interesting, complex and suspenseful. The second half of the book totally sucked me in and I stayed up all night just to finish the book. Through out the b...more

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Aug 14, 2011 The Super Moop rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The one good thing that's come out of my having sat through this is, I now know a thing or two about mosquitoes, parasites and Ronald Ross. That's a point in favour of Mr.Ghosh. The man is clearly a human encyclopaedia. Everything I've read of his, which admittedly isn't a great deal, has been packed with technical detail about whatever subject it is that he's taken upon himself to write about.

In The Sea of Poppies, he manages to build a powerful, thrusting narrative on the foundations of his t...more The one good thing that's come out of my having sat through this is, I now know a thing or two about mosquitoes, parasites and Ronald Ross. That's a point in favour of Mr.Ghosh. The man is clearly a human encyclopaedia. Everything I've read of his, which admittedly isn't a great deal, has been packed with technical detail about whatever subject it is that he's taken upon himself to write about.

In The Sea of Poppies, he manages to build a powerful, thrusting narrative on the foundations of his trademarked academic rigour, making it, in the process, the towering achievement it is; in The Hungry Tide, on the other hand, there's a sense of the facts dominating the somewhat rickety plot, but the book works nevertheless, because the facts themselves command interest.

The Calcutta Chromosome is, of all things, an attempt at science fiction, which falls flat because there's almost nothing to chew on except the occasional monologue about the history and science of early tropical medicine. Fascinating as the subject is, it isn't substantial enough to hold an entire novel up on its own merits, and the lesson in all of this is, books mustn't be written for reasons of vanity alone; there's a point to stories that hold one's attention and tie up in the end.

Quite apart from that, and this comes as a surprise, the book is poorly written. The dialogue is weak - in what seems like an attempt to give the story's Mr.Murugan a little character, Ghosh saddles the poor man with cod-American speech, a move which has the opposite effect, and instantly cuts the poor man down to a caricature. What makes me even more uneasy are the translations of Bengali figures of speech, done tactlessly and literally - this bothers me a little in The Hungry Tide, and it bothers me a lot more with this book, appearing as it does amidst already leaden prose - chatar matha may fit seamlessly into Bengali; "umbrella head" sounds horrible and meaningless in English, and you'd think any author with an ear for dialogue would notice.

But the real crime is the plot. The entire story reads like something Ghosh made up as he went along - carroming wildly from era to era and sub-plot to sub-plot, all in aid of the thoroughly flimsy premise which has practically the entire city of Calcutta in on a senseless, unprofitable, untenable conspiracy, one which is neither interesting nor scary, merely... odd, lacking a point.

On top of this, each time the narrative paints itself into a corner, along comes a bizarre and unworldly coincidence or digression which sorts it all out. Now, I'm as willing to suspend my disbelief as the next man, but there's a limit, and this "Lutchman was actually Laakhan!!" and "Tara was really Urmila!" and "Mrs.Ana-whatever-it-was was actually the goddess of mosquitoes!" stuff is a cop-out which has very nearly succeeded in convincing me that when Amitav Ghosh started writing this novel, he had no idea where he wanted it to end.

In the meanwhile, the devices used to build up tension - the ghost train, the ritual that one of the women stumbles upon in the abandoned house - are arbitrary and simplistic; they come across as sort of thing one may try to scare kids with, but won't wash when you've paid money to read an award-winning novelist.

It's hard to think of the book as anything more than an academic's conceit, a little fantasy too obscure to engage the lay reader. The Calcutta Chromosomoe finds Amitav Ghosh floundering out of his depth, plays to almost none of his strengths, revealing instead all his shortcomings as a writer.

It's not worth the time one spends on it.(less)

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Dec 21, 2009 Thurston Hunger rated it 3 of 5 stars

I knew nothing about this book going in, and this is my first time reading Ghosh, although our book club has "Sea of Poppies" as an upcoming selection.

Anyways, without saying anything about the book specifically, I can say it is a quick read, short chapters that get in and out (of their respective time sequences), and much of the book is dialog-driven. So really a quick and easy read, pushed forward by an air of tense mystery. I could see this as an ideal airplane read, perhaps on going to the...more

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Aug 21, 2009 Tony Gleeson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Okay, I finished this book about a week ago as I write this and I am STILL not sure if I like it enough to give it that fourth star. This is an intriguing novel-- part near-future science fiction with a whiff of the style of cyberpunk writers like William Gibson; part historical fiction incorporating a fascinating overview of the research into malaria in the late 19th century; part hyperliterate surrealism à la Borges; part conspiracy novel reminiscent of Robert Anton Wilson's paranoid delights...more

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Sep 10, 2011 Arun Divakar rated it 2 of 5 stars

I am at a loss trying to write down what exactly I felt after reading this book. Was it the fact that none of the mysteries got resolved after the last page ? Was it the fact that contrary to my usual style of writing reviews I took a lot at other reviewers and find them creating interpretations for the web spun for this tale ? Such questions abound. I have no answer but a feeling (superficial though ) of being led down a long winding corridor and finally coming face on with a wall.

The premise...more

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Mar 02, 2013 Diwakar rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, mysteries, thrillers

Calcutta Chromosome is one of the best books I've ever read. It is no wonder Amitav Ghosh is such a popular writer. It is a masterpiece of fantasy and science fiction, masterfully blending fact and fiction into a seamless whole.

This book is difficult to describe, even though it focuses on just one subject, when one looks closely enough. The reason for this difficulty is probably because of the myriad emotions it evokes in its readers, ranging from thrill to awe and horror.

Whatever the reason ma...more

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Feb 10, 2012 Joey rated it 3 of 5 stars

What a strange, atmospheric, genre-defying book - little did I think that a story based on Ronald Ross's discovery of malaria and life cycle of the anopheles mosquito could be so absorbing. It begins in futuristic New York where Antar, an Egyptian computer specialist who is part of a corporation that is conducting, it seems, an inventory of the world - discovers a fragment of an ID card that belonged to a colleague who was obsessed with Ross and malaria. So much so, the colleague had found his w...more What a strange, atmospheric, genre-defying book - little did I think that a story based on Ronald Ross's discovery of malaria and life cycle of the anopheles mosquito could be so absorbing. It begins in futuristic New York where Antar, an Egyptian computer specialist who is part of a corporation that is conducting, it seems, an inventory of the world - discovers a fragment of an ID card that belonged to a colleague who was obsessed with Ross and malaria. So much so, the colleague had found his way to Calcutta (where Ross lived and worked) and then disappeared. The colleague, Murugan, believed that Ross's discovery was manipulated by a shadowy and forbidding Indian 'counter-science' group that manipulated the direction of malaria research to suit its own arcane purposes. Antar becomes determined to unravel the mystery of his colleague's disappearance, and there unfolds a many-layered tale of twists and turns.

Part gothic horror, part pulse-lifting mystery/thriller, part-sci-fi/paranormal/ghost story, part critique of the colonial scientific establishment and its insistence on "English" discoveries - the story is fast-paced, rich and intriguing. All the characters are well-drawn and I especially loved that a subject that could so easily be dominated by men, had several strong, interesting women. It also brings up some interesting questions regarding for instance the tyranny of academy and how it promotes only certain ways of seeing; western medicine versus non-traditional healing; and immortality. All his held together by some really lyrical writing and lifting descriptions of life in Calcutta - from the suffocating home life of an aspiring journalist; to crossing streets with your life in your hands; to train rides out of Sealdah station; to the winding lanes of Kumartoli where the statues of gods and goddesses are sculpted. If I must critique it, I would say that they story works really well at the horror/thriller/sci-fic/mystery level. However, on the metaphysical level, gets a bit too fantastical and stretches one's willing suspension of disbelief to the very limit.(less)

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Apr 25, 2013 Nethra Ram rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: indian-book-challenge

The tagline for this book runs - A novel of fevers, delirium and discovery and I couldn't have put it better. There were fevers, there certainly was delirium and there were quite a few discoveries in this novel that leave you panting along in their wake. But what they were supposed to mean and why they were meant to be interlinked are questions that I'll probably never find answers to. I did like this book; the narration, which did not aim for literary stars, drove me crazy with excitement and I...more The tagline for this book runs - A novel of fevers, delirium and discovery and I couldn't have put it better. There were fevers, there certainly was delirium and there were quite a few discoveries in this novel that leave you panting along in their wake. But what they were supposed to mean and why they were meant to be interlinked are questions that I'll probably never find answers to. I did like this book; the narration, which did not aim for literary stars, drove me crazy with excitement and I was as eager as the eccentric Murugan to find out what the hell was happening. I did manage to run along until the very end when suddenly all sanity disappeared and I was left blinking and faced with the fact that the book had ended and that's that.

I don't think the author intended to tie things up at all. Atleast not in a way that the reader might understand as an obvious conclusion or even figure out as a hidden metaphor. The story felt like one of those Russian Roulette tables where everything goes for a spin, an exhilarating spin nevertheless but when the table stops turning, nothing makes sense anymore.

I wouldn't say the book tried to be three different kinds of genre fiction. I think the ultimate point of this story was to pen down the influence of chance, shrewdness, a dose of crazy and luck that goes into any discovery. The fact that the theme of this plot by itself is pretty vague, the whole idea of silence changing when its broken, is the trump card. Any of the why's would get answered with a shrug and a 'who knows?'

The plot had strong points to build on - chromosomal transfer, using religion to dress up science and the extent of eccentricity a man can push himself to, to find answers. But none of these aspects get dealt with in any detail except for the background stories and the people involved.

What was it with Phulboni and the train? Was he suffering from malaria as well? And what did Antar become in the end? The transformed Murugan? And Urmila being the chosen one? That was just plainly bland.

The book had its moments and I loved the paranormal hints but I was so disappointed in the end, I can't even define why. Maybe that's a silence I shouldn't change. My four stars are for the gripping power of Ghosh's story telling that led me to a frantic search for those chapters after the book ends, where he explains everything. (less)

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Sep 21, 2010 Anjali rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, india, indian-author, medical, mystery, read-in-2010, science-fiction

I picked up The Calcutta Chromosome after a friend recommended it. I had no idea what the book was about when I started reading it, which turned out to be a good thing because I was pleasantly surprised with what the book offered.

Calcutta Chromosome is, simply put, a sci-fi book. It is about a man’s quest for finding the truth – the truth behind the cause of malaria and the research that went behind it. The book starts with a man, Antar, working on his super smart computer, Ava, and finding an I...more I picked up The Calcutta Chromosome after a friend recommended it. I had no idea what the book was about when I started reading it, which turned out to be a good thing because I was pleasantly surprised with what the book offered.

Calcutta Chromosome is, simply put, a sci-fi book. It is about a man’s quest for finding the truth – the truth behind the cause of malaria and the research that went behind it. The book starts with a man, Antar, working on his super smart computer, Ava, and finding an ID card on screen which belonged to a person he knew. The ID brings back memories and Antar’s curiosity leads him to the person’s file and Antar realizes that the person, Murugan, has been missing since many years. Antar recalls that Murugan had been obsessed with malaria and its cause and the scientist who found the cause, Ronald Ross. Murugan’s theory is that Ross did not find the cause on his own, but was guided to the right path by certain forces around him. Murugan’s quest brings him to Calcutta, the place where Ross made his dicover from where he goes missing.

The story switches places and periods to tell us stories that have are connected to Murugan’s story. We go back to that period when Ross was doing the research and even before that when Cunningham was attempting the same thing. There are a lot of characters and the story moves back and forth and sometimes there is a story within a story and another within it and it got confusing for me.

The main plot is very interesting – to suggest that someone wanted Ross to identify the cause of malaria in order to hide some other bigger secret. Ghosh adds a touch of Hindu background to the sci-fi story by bringing in a character who is seen as ‘God woman’ and adding incidents of puja and shrine and festivals and reincarnations. He even gives a glimpse of a ghost – trains appearing out of no where and tracks being changed automatically. I thought this part was silly.

In the end, all the characters in the book are involved in the story somehow and we have this long chain of events happening over centuries and the characters spread across places and periods and we don’t know what the heck is happening. The worst part is the book ended so abruptly that I wanted to kick the author. It’s good to end the book on suspense and let the reader interpret the ending in his own way, but what Ghosh did with this book was more like mocking the reader.

The characters are poorly developed, which is often the case in sci-fi. You concentrate on the plot and the story rather than create believable characters.

This was my first Ghosh book and it left a sour taste in my mouth. And I don’t know whether I really want to read another Ghosh book. If you have read Ghosh, then which book would you recommend I pick next?(less)

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Oct 26, 2012 Ubik 2.0 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

E' difficile esprimere un giudizio univoco su quest'opera: provando a dare una valutazione in termini aritmetici, **** possono essere intese come una media fra *** (che deriva dall'eccessiva e forse troppo compiaciuta volontà dell'autore di aggrovigliare oltremodo la matassa degli eventi, alcuni fili della quale sembrano rimanere oscuri anche dopo la conclusione del libro...) e *****, meritate per l'estrema suggestione che Ghosh riesce ad infondere nella descrizione dell'ambiente, degli eventi e...more

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Oct 10, 2011 Smitha rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: india-via-books, scifi-utopia-dystopia, medical-fiction

Finished the book, but am much confused regarding the story. The events were haphazard, not chronological. I was lost.
It was weird, but kept my interest piqued to the last page. I was hoping against hope to find answers to all those baffling questions and doubts in the last few pages. But I am more confused than ever.
1. What really happens? what is this non-transferable chromosome nonsense?
2. There are many facts about fever therapy in malaria and the effect of malaria on brain which are not tau...more

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May 19, 2011 Deepti rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I could say I've finished this novel but the fact is, I've hardly understood it, and the sad part is I don't think multiple reads of this will make it any clearer.

This is my third Amitav Ghosh novel. The other two were Shadowlines and In An Antique Land. While Shadowlines bugged me with its back-and-forth narrative, hopping through various periods on the timeline and from various caharcters' perspectives, it was blessed by the virtue of brilliant characterisation. In An Antique Land, to me, was...more I could say I've finished this novel but the fact is, I've hardly understood it, and the sad part is I don't think multiple reads of this will make it any clearer.

This is my third Amitav Ghosh novel. The other two were Shadowlines and In An Antique Land. While Shadowlines bugged me with its back-and-forth narrative, hopping through various periods on the timeline and from various caharcters' perspectives, it was blessed by the virtue of brilliant characterisation. In An Antique Land, to me, was pure joy to read. Historical fiction is always fun, and the more accurate that history is, the more one can appreciate the author/compiler, and the lack of strong characterisation may be sacrificed for the sake of fact in fiction. But though The Calcutta Chromosome incorporates the above qualities, it fails to deliver either strong characters or a plausible storyline.

There is a reason I took 4 days to read this relatively small and easy-to-skim book. I zoomed through the first 200 pages in almost a day and then stopped merely 20 pages before the end and tossed it aside. It was out of duty rather than curiosity that I finally got through the last couple of chapters. The reasons are not hard to find: the ending was in sight but the story kept getting more convoluted and fantastical, and with the addition of so many new characters, it started looking like one of those badly made Hindi serials and just exasperated me. I think it was JK Rowling that once said something like, "Readers like to be surprised, not conned." This book unfortunately does not give the reader a chance to understand what is happening, and more than lack of a believable or apparently traceable thread, I believe it all boils down to terrible characterisation.

First you have this guy Antar, from Egypt, whose complete social life seems to consist of interactions with his robot-like device, Ava. She can sense his moods, respond appropriately, and seems fond of talking in languages he does not know and projecting lifesize holograms into his room that scare the crap out of him. He is quiet, relatively modest, and does not seem thrilled at the prospect of meeting up with anyone human (his neighbour Tara, for instance, an impending meeting that was dwelt upon for the first fifty pages at least.) When he does come across Murugan's record, he seems to have no recollection of who this guy is, despite the fact that his file is fat with information that he has input himself regarding this man.

Then there is Murugan himself. He is described by the author as loud, unpleasant, etc. but the reader is not given a chance to see those qualities for him/herself. All the reader comes to know through the portrayal of this man is that he is self-centered and annoyingly condescending to everyone regarding what he is studying and what he knows about Ronald Ross. Towards the end of the novel he is shown to have a mutual attraction to the mousey Urmila, although she has her own deal altogether and is somewhat in love with the equally self-absorbed Sonali 'di'. When the reader is introduced to Sonali, she is going to attend a talk by a famous man, Phulboni, with whom there is no discernible connection. But at the end of the book the reader learns that this man is Sonali's father! See what I mean when I say 'conned'?
Of course then there are all the characters that switch places (or chromosomes or whatever) because they are all mired in this intricate malaria-cure conspiracy - Phulboni, Romen, Laakhan etc..

Murugan, from the way he talks, sounds as if he has great derision for Ronald Ross in spite of the fact that he spent his whole adult life studying him and tracing the line of his thought. The premise of this science fiction is that Ronald Ross did not know as much about malaria and mosquitoes as other scientists who were working on it long before he thought of it. He has an assistant called Lutchman (Laakhan) who is sort of like a spy, or hired by, the 'other' camp to give him the evidence he requires in blood samples that will lead him onto the next discovery (or off the track? I really couldn't figure out from just one reading). The 'other' camp is not a scientist of established repute or anything, it's a black magic woman who beheads pigeons in her attempt to breed a strain of malaria (that she has found out is a cure for syphilis) into them. While they allow poor 'Ronnie' to imagine he has understood the life cycle of the mosquito and has unearthed the secrets of malaria, this woman and her cronies are merrily transferring bits of their personality into other people, thus ensuring that a part of themselves lives on (or something). I should not even attempt to explain this plot, in fact, as it was totally lost on me.

Suffice it to say that I thought this book, though an exciting and fast read, was a complete failure when it comes to resolutions and conclusions. It is one thing to leave questions unanswered, but to expect the reader to infer these answers without sufficient evidence is too much to ask. Conclusion: I liked it but only because it was Ghosh. This is still sloppy story-telling at best. (less)

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Mar 19, 2013 Karel rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: srzbznz

I have no idea what I just read.

Something about asexual reincarnation (that's really more like cloning) via Malaria, a bunch of scientists that are halfway fiction and halfway fact. A bunch of people who are the same people appearing over and over again, yet you don't meet them enough to actually know who they are, so they're kind of like the specter over the horizon that you don't understand even after 320 pages about them.

?????????

I don't know who any of the characters are, because they're all...more

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Oct 21, 2010 Stef rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, history, horror, medical, library-book, mystery, science, sf-and-f, india, fantasy

If Peter Weir's movie The Last Wave (aka Black Rain) were set in India and involved the study of malaria, and you threw in a little Stanislaw Lem, and you stuck it all into a set of Russian nesting dolls, you might end up with something like The Calcutta Chromosome.

The novel has multiple layers and each one is a different genre of story. The outer layer has science fiction trappings. The middle layers are mystery and historical fiction. The inner layers are ghost stories. But that makes it soun...more

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May 12, 2012 Kaitlin rated it 1 of 5 stars

The lead to this book is great, but about a third of the way in, the suspense is lost and the story gets sloppy. I love that the author played with time and tried to tell a story from varied perspectives, but he didn't tie things together coherently enough for that mechanism to work. I struggled to figure out what the point of it all was.

The characters are talking heads; nobody's personality is distinguishable. It's impossible to care about anyone because all they do is explain things to each ot...more

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Sep 27, 2007 Axel rated it 5 of 5 stars

My first ever book by A. Ghosh and because of this I bought four of his later books over the years. None matched the suspense of the first one, which I read in the hot summer in a poorly air-conditioned Texas dorm room. I could almost feel the delirium myself.

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Apr 27, 2011 Kelley Ross rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mysteries-and-thrillers, sci-fi

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 26, 2013 Priya rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is so odd and so terribly fascinating. It may be science fiction, but it also belongs to the genres of historical fiction, suspense, horror and fantasy. The book has been called too vague or pretentious, but I don't agree with that. It is slightly hard to follow the twists and turns in the plot and the varying timelines, but it makes a good point. The mystical Indian society and their reluctance, impatience even, when dealing with the British, the secrecy surrounding their strange cust...more

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Nov 07, 2010 Moondust rated it 4 of 5 stars

The book is loosely based on the life and times of Sir Ronald Ross, the Nobel Prize winning scientist who achieved a breakthrough in malaria research in 1898. Though in the novel, Ross doesn't discover on his own, he is led to it by native Indians.

The beginning is very descriptive and all the comments on the back of the book praise this characteristic of the book. I found this extremely irritating because it's like beating round the bush to me! But as the book progressed it got really interestin...more

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Apr 05, 2013 Leo rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, india, sci-fi, mystery

So this is a literary fiction, and with a mix of sci-fi and mystery as well. We begin in a time somewhere in the future. A guy Antar finds an ID card of a guy he knows, and with that, resurfaces old memories. The book goes back and forth between Antar’s current life, recollections of his conversation with the guy, Murugan and also a couple of women, Urmila and Sonali. I hear its supposed to be a sci-fi thriller, but I can’t quite find the thrill. To me, the story felt slow and I struggled to fin...more

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Oct 11, 2011 Aditya rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: indian-fiction, sci-fi

What do i think abt this book? Very tough to say now. All along while i was reading the book, i felt it's a definite 4-star thriller. I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat reading the last few pages, and i suddenly found there aren't any more pages left, but a lot of explaining to be done! :( Am still giving the benefit of doubt to Amitav Ghosh thinking that a re-read might help clarify things. U know, just like no one can figure out what the heck Keanu Reeves got into until we watch an...more

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Oct 10, 2011 Julia rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: india, thriller, sci-fi

Maybe I should say straight away that I'm not a fan of sci-fi or mysteries and that Dan Brown is quite at the bottom of my list of favourite authors - so maybe I'm just not the reader this book is meant for. Considering this, I found the main topic quite intriguing: The discovery of malarial cure - was it really accomplished by quite a brutish Brit without any real scientific background or did someone else guide him there? The plot kept me reading chapter by chapter and the time passed fast as t...more

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Mar 10, 2012 Joy Dutta rated it 4 of 5 stars

A strange book, storyline racing as a Dan Brown book, several stories which start off as independent, run in parallel. The difference being in Dan Brown's the stories are separated in Space whereas Mr. Ghosh paces the stories through time and space. A dark silence prevails throughout which gives the story a mysterious and often incomprehensible feel, but it nevertheless manages to keep the attention of the reader throughout. Based on a historical event, the author tries his best to give it a sen...more

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About Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh is one of India's best-known writers. His books include The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, Incendiary Circumstances, The Hungry Tide. His most recent novel, Sea of Poppies, is the first volume of the Ibis Trilogy.

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He studied in Dehra Dun, New Delhi, Alexan...more

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title link	preview: The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/67100.The_Calcutta_Chromosome?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348079596l/67100.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/67100.The_Calcutta_Chromosome?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery by Amitav Ghosh[/url]

The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery

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