Amitav Ghosh's Blog, page 3

‘What’s happening to the weather?’

Since the publication of ‘The Great Derangement’ I’ve received many reports of freakish weather from friends and readers. One such arrived on May 31, from Turin. It was from   Anna Nadotti,   who has been my Italian translator for thirty years (see also this earlier post).             The message, […]

Ravi Agrawal’s ‘India Connected: How the Smartphone is Transforming the World’s Largest Democracy ‘. A Review

  Ravi Agrawal (who I’ve known since he was an undergraduate at Harvard) served as CNN’s bureau chief in New Delhi from 2014 to 2017. Before that he was the senior producer of Fareed Zakaria’s television show GPS. And he has recently started a new job as Managing Editor of the influential American magazine Foreign […]

Thirteen Factories Museum

  Dear Mr Ghosh, I noticed on your blog that a number of the readers of the Ibis Trilogy have enquired about what now remains in Guangzhou from the scenes that you have described in the books. I was also inspired to visit Guangzhou in November 2017 after completing a reading of your excellent Ibis […]

Two Assamese Novels

  Rita Chowdhury’s compelling historical novel, Chinatown Days, is about a community that was founded by a handful of Chinese workers who came to Assam in the 1830s at the behest of the British East India Company, which was then attempting to establish a tea industry in India in order to reduce its dependence on […]

letter on the behaviour of vines

  Dear Mr. Ghosh, I just read your notes about vine behavior in your masterful “The Great Derangement” and thought you might be interested in the following. I study vines, but over the past decades my research has become focused on tropical forest conservation and rural development through sustainable management for timber, principally in Southeast […]

‘Living with Disasters’

      I just finished reading Amites Mukhopadhyay’s     Living with Disasters: Communities and Development in the Indian Sundarbans (Cambridge University Press, 2016).              Mukhopadhyay’s study brims with insights into the life and culture of the Sundarbans. Of special interest is the author’s account of the impact of Cyclone […]

Letter from Amsterdam

Dear Mr. Ghosh,  I recently came across your Ibis trilogy and read them all in one go. I was just mesmerised with both the story and learning about the history of the place and time it is set in. These books now belong to my favourites and I just want to thank you for the […]

‘We are really running out of time’: a comment on my co-authored piece in the Guardian

    On January 31st, Dr. Aaron Lobo, a marine conservationist, and I published a co-authored article in the Guardian, entitled Bay of Bengal: depleted fish stocks and huge dead zone signal tipping point. The article has had many shares and comments as will be evident from the comments section at the end. I also […]

Victor Rangel Ribeiro’s ‘The Miscreant’

Victor Rangel Ribeiro published his first novel in 1998, at the age of seventy-two. It took its name from a fictional village, Tivolem, and is among the finest novels ever to be written about Goa. Peopled with a richly varied cast of characters  it conjures up an idiosyncratic world of reclusive musicians, charming thieves and […]

Himalayan Cornucopia

  The Centenary Farmers’ Market in Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan, is a cornucopia of fresh, organic produce:                           chilies (an essential ingredient in Bhutanese cuisine), dried                          and fresh;       […]