Amitav Ghosh's Blog, page 18

Yet another Indian First World War memoir found!

  A couple of weeks ago Murali Ranganathan wrote to let me know that he had found a First World War memoir in Gujarati (see my post of  Oct 15 Murali Ranganathan does it again – an amazing new find!) I have long felt that a First World War memoir in Marathi must exist  (the [...]

Can people from the past ‘channel’ themselves into contemporary fiction?

  ‘Tell me whom you haunt,’ André Breton famously said, ‘and I’ll tell you who you are.’ It’s always disconcerting when a character or a scene in a novel turns out to have an unsuspected ‘real life’ counterpart. The experience is strangest of course when the character or scene in question is one that you [...]

Europe and the Fate of the Earth – Part 7 of 7

  [This is an extended version of my keynote address for the European Cultural Foundation’s ‘Imagining Europe’ event, which was held in Amsterdam between October 4 and 7 this year. The address was delivered on October 4 at the opening event. It will be posted here without footnotes, as a 7 part series. A fully [...]

Europe and the Fate of the Earth – Part 6 of 7

  [This is an extended version of my keynote address for the European Cultural Foundation’s ‘Imagining Europe’ event, which was held in Amsterdam between October 4 and 7 this year. The address was delivered on October 4 at the opening event. It will be posted here without footnotes, as a 7 part series. A fully [...]

Europe and the Fate of the Earth – Part 5 of 7

  [This is an extended version of my keynote address for the European Cultural Foundation’s ‘Imagining Europe’ event, which was held in Amsterdam between October 4 and 7 this year. The address was delivered on October 4 at the opening event. It will be posted here without footnotes, as a 7 part series. A fully [...]

Europe and the Fate of the Earth – Part 4 of 7

  [This is an extended version of my keynote address for the European Cultural Foundation’s ‘Imagining Europe’ event, which was held in Amsterdam between October 4 and 7 this year. The address was delivered on October 4 at the opening event. It will be posted here without footnotes, as a 7 part series. A fully [...]

Europe and the Fate of the Earth – Part 3 of 7

  [This is an extended version of my keynote address for the European Cultural Foundation’s ‘Imagining Europe’ event, which was held in Amsterdam between October 4 and 7 this year. The address was delivered on October 4 at the opening event. It will be posted here without footnotes, as a 7 part series. A fully [...]

Europe and the Fate of the Earth – Part 2 of 7

  [This is an extended version of my keynote address for the European Cultural Foundation’s ‘Imagining Europe’ event, which was held in Amsterdam between October 4 and 7 this year. The address was delivered on October 4 at the opening event. It will be posted here without footnotes, as a 7 part series. A fully [...]

Europe and the fate of the Earth – Part 1 of 7

    [This is an extended version of my keynote address for the European Cultural Foundation’s ‘Imagining Europe’ event, which was held in Amsterdam between October 4 and 7 this year. The address was delivered on October 4 at the opening event. It will be posted here without footnotes, as a 7 part series. A [...]

Sunil Gangopadhyay and his legacy

    Sunil Gangopadhyay was a great writer and a warm, kind and generous man. I can scarcely believe that he is gone. Our interests overlapped in odd and sometimes surprising ways. Sunil-da loved Indian classical music for instance, and it was through a novella of his, about the life of the great singer Amir [...]