Amitav Ghosh's Blog, page 8

The Dark House of the Neighbourhood

      In an article written in 1996 I wrote of Burma that for several decades the country had been ‘the dark house of the neighbourhood, huddled behind an impenetrable, overgrown fence.’ Today Burma is a completely changed country, yet one of its most important buildings still embodies that description: it is the Central […]

Petrofiction and Petroculture

  In April this year I visited the University of Oregon, Eugene, which is a global pioneer in cross-disciplinary eco-critical studies. While I was there I had an interesting meeting with Stephanie Le Menager, the author of Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century – a fascinating study of the role of oil in […]

Letter from a reader

_____________________ Dr Ghosh, It is with great pleasure I write this little note to you. I purchased one of your books, “The hungry tide” in an airport book shop during my recent visit to India. It was an amazing read. Honestly, I could not put the book down until the end. My eyes held tears […]

Links to my Bogaziçi Chronicles event with novelist Ayfer Tunç, Istanbul, June 6, 2014

      Links to my Bogaziçi Chronicles event with novelist Ayfer Tunç at Bogaziçi University, Istanbul, June 6, 2014:   Aydinlik; Cumhuriyet; Taraf; Haysev; Radikal; Vatan; Haber Turk; kitapzen;   &   http://www.yurtgundemi.com/amitav-gho...   http://www.bize-gore.com/tag/yazar-ve...   http://www.ensuperhaber.com/kultur-sa...   http://www.arcaajans.com/haber/sanat/...   http://www.alemihaber.com/kultur-sana...   http://article.wn.com/view/2014/05/31...   http://www.haberler.com/amitav-ghosh-...   http://www.sondakika.com/haber/haber-...   http://www.egitimajansi.com/haber/ami...          

Neel Mukherjee’s THE LIVES OF OTHERS: a review

      Neel Mukherjee’s 2008 novel, Past Continuous [i] is a many-stranded story, set partly in Calcutta (now Kolkata [ii]) and partly in Oxford and London (I should add that the book shared the Crossword Prize with my Sea of Poppies that year; since then Neel and I have become good friends). The Calcutta […]

Letter from a Mathematician, Concerning Fractal Forms in Indian Art

  April 23 Hello Amitav: It was a pleasure meeting you and listening to your talk.  I particularly enjoyed our brief conversation about Fractals at the end of the talk, and I am following up on your invitation to write to you. As I mentioned I am a mathematician with a Ph.D in the very […]

Letter from University of Houston Students

  On April 10 I met with a ‘World Cultures and Literature 2351‘ class at the University of Houston. Last week Prof Anne Reitz, who teaches the course, forwarded me a letter the students had written me. It is reproduced here with their permission.   Thanks guys! I think you’re mad cool too.     […]

Correspondence with an Indian-American Student

      4th April, 2014   Dear Mr. Amitav Ghosh, My name is Saloni Gupta and I was at a discussion held at the Asian American Cultural Center [at Rutgers University, New Jersey].  Unfortunately, I missed the chance of speaking to you after the discussion.  I personally found the discussion to be quite fascinating. […]

Correspondence with Padma Viswanathan, author of THE EVER AFTER OF ASHWIN RAO

  Padma Viswanathan‘s novel The Ever After of Ashwin Rao has just been published by Random House Canada.     The jacket copy describes the book as: ‘… a stunning new work set among families of those who lost loved ones in the 1985 Air India bombing, registering the unexpected reverberations of this tragedy in […]

Laurel Braitman’s ANIMAL MADNESS – a review

      Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves Laurel Braitman Simon & Schuster [to be published June 10, 2014]             Rare indeed is it to come upon a work of non-fiction as compelling as Laurel Braitman’s Animal Madness. The book […]