Amitav Ghosh's Blog, page 9

More on the Siege of Kut al-Amara

    I recently posted an exchange of letters between myself and Chris Howell, who wrote to me after reading my posts on the Mesopotamia campaign of 1915-16 in the First World War. Chris then sent me some excerpts from his book No Thankful Village: The Impact of the Great War on a Group of […]

Correspondence on the siege of Kut al-Amara, 1916

    March 17, 2014 Dear Mr Ghosh, Earlier today I came across your ‘On to Baghdad’ page on the net.   Ten years ago I wrote and published a book called No Thankful Village that included the first hand accounts of three officers I had previously interviewed. It includes the following spoken by Lt […]

Correspondence on the Liverpool connections of 1st World War military doctor Kalyan Mukherji

Feb 18, 2014 Dear Amitav, I discovered your wonderful blog entries about Kalyan Kumar Mukherji whilst researching First World War soldiers from the Liverpool area. I initially became interested in Captain Mukherji because he is recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as the “son of Mrs. Blair of 7 Percy St, Liverpool, England.”   After […]

The Lascar War Memorial, Kolkata

  [This is a guest post by Commodore Bibhu Mohanti (retd.) of Cuttack, Odisha. Commodore Mohanti also provided the collage below.]       The Lascar War Memorial is located in the Indian Naval premises of Hastings, Kolkata. In 1920, William Ingram Keir, an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects, started the construction […]

The Lascar War Memorial, Kolkata (Guest post)

  [This is a guest post by Commodore Bibhu Mohanti (retd.) of Cuttack, Odisha. Commodore Mohanti also provided the collage below.]       The Lascar War Memorial is located in the Indian Naval premises of Hastings, Kolkata. In 1920, William Ingram Keir, an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects, started the construction […]

A Jewish connection with pre-war Rangoon

    Dear Mr. Ghosh I just finished reading your book The Glass Palace. I enjoyed it very much. It has a very personal meaning to me and I would like to ask you if you have more information regarding the “Forgotten Long March” of 1941 My husband’s father was a Jewish merchant in Rangoon […]

Book III of the IBIS TRILOGY

  I am pleased to announced the title of the third book of the Ibis Trilogy. It  is: Flood of Fire. The estimated date of publication is the Spring of 2015. More details will appear anon in the catalogues of my publishers: Penguin India, John Murray (UK) and Farrar, Straus and Giroux (USA).  

An Asian View of Europe: Pallavi Aiyar’s ‘Punjabi Parmesan’ – part 2

    One of the pleasures of Pallavi Aiyar’s Punjabi Parmesan §  is that it addresses the pressing issues of contemporary Europe through a chorus of contrasting voices. Pallavi is a diligent reporter and a fine interviewer; she has an extraordinary knack for finding interesting people to talk to, on a wide range of subjects […]

An Asian View of Europe: Pallavi Aiyar’s ‘Punjabi Parmesan’ – part 1

    Pallavi Aiyar’s new book, Punjabi Parmesan (Penguin India, December 2013) is an account of contemporary Europe seen through Asian eyes. The project is ambitious, timely and important, and I cannot think of anyone who is better equipped to undertake it than Pallavi Aiyar. Born, raised and schooled in India, Pallavi also has a […]

Letter from a reader

  Dear Amitav, I just finished reading The Glass Palace. It was such an amazing read. I had no idea about Burma; that it was an egalitarian society, that it was a rich country, that it had no caste system and many other things. I think The Glass Palace will remain in my head for […]