Amitav Ghosh's Blog, page 24

On Blogging: Part 3 of 4

      The triumph of logocentricism was absolute but short-lived. The Internet has dealt a mortal blow to the fundamentalism of the Word. Today not even the most fanatically iconoclastic puritan can hope to purge his surroundings of images and iconography in the way that his forbears could. In effect, a logocentric era has [...]

On Blogging: 2 of 4

      When we think of the technology of movable-type print it is always in a spirit of gratitude, which is only as it should be. Yet, for all its blessings, print was also responsible for deepening the divide between words and images. Before the invention of print words and images had usually been [...]

On Blogging: Part 1 of 4

        [My posts having occasioned some intest in the Italian press (see 'Tristful Post Makes News in Trieste', March 23), I was asked to write something on blogging to coincide with the paperback publication of the Italian edition of River of Smoke. The piece - I will not call it an 'article' [...]

Istanbul and Indian Soldiers of the First World War

    [The pictures and text posted here were sent to me by Vedica Kant who studied in Delhi and Oxford. She is now living in Istanbul.]         Given how little thought India’s contribution to the World Wars gets in our collective historical memory, it is almost strange to think that in [...]

The View from Sir Syed’s Room

      On a recent visit to London I was pleasantly surprised to find that my lodgings,                             which had a fine view of Mecklenburgh Square in Bloomsbury,                           [...]

Seen in the London Underground

                              At Euston Station                         River of Smoke in paperback                      

Library Nation

    British Library, 9.25 a.m., May 16.                       The library will open in 5 minutes but no one wants to waste a minute of precious library time.                   When the doors open, people rush inside.   [...]

Recently Published…

        in Italy       by Alessandro Vescovi (Le Lettere, Florence, 2011)                       Alessandro tells me the words on the cover are taken from The Hungry Tide: “He hunted down facts in the way that a magpie collects shiny things. Yet [...]

Occupy Art!

    ‘Occupy Art’ might be the name by which the Arte Povera movement would be known had it been launched in this decade instead of the 1960s. Despite the gap in time the analogies are striking. Arte Povera (which is often translated as ‘Poor’ or ‘Impoverished’ art) was born in Turin, where Fiat,   [...]

World’s First Oil Tanker, Built by Nobel Bros., was called ‘Zoroaster’

    From Shernaz Italia, a curious tale of ‘connectedness’, taken from: ‘Stansberry’s Investment Advisory,’ November 2011. The article is titled ‘America’s Oil Boom’.       ‘Robert Nobel (Sir Alfred Nobel of Dynamite fame & Nobel Prize founder!) surely knew about Zoroastrianism and its flaming temples before he arrived in Baku in 1876. As a [...]