Amitav Ghosh's Blog

Letter about ‘The Ghat of the Only World’. My essay on Agha Shahid Ali has...

Letter about ‘The Ghat of the Only World’. My essay on Agha Shahid Ali has been on the curriculum of India’s Central Board of Secondary Education for quite a while, which means that it is read every year by millions of schoolchildren. Every now and then I get beautiful letters from young people who have […]

Letter about ‘The Ghat of the Only World’. My essay on Agha Shahid Ali has been on the curriculum of India’s Central Board of Secondary Education for quite a while, which means that it is read every year by millions of schoolchildren. Every now and then I get beautiful letters from young people who have […]

What kind of collective action is likely to be most effective in mitigating climate change? Switching to electric cars? Installing solar panels? Planting trees? Giving up flying? These are of course the solutions we usually hear about. But according to the army of experts who compiled the 2017 report Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever […]

As a writer of fiction, it has happened to me many times over the years that scenes, characters and places that I believed to exist only in my imagination have turned out to have real life counterparts. The most recent instance of this occurred a few days ago when I received a message from Dr. […]

Dear Mr Ghosh, I just want to thank you for the pleasure I ‘ve received from reading your books. It is always a unique experience: while enjoying the narrative and engrossed in the story, I discovered new paths in history, entire worlds, issues, phenomena and undercurrents that I had ignored before, especially as regards India […]

I have of late been receiving many stories, novels, poems and art catalogues that cite The Great Derangement as an influence or inspiration. It is, of course, immensely gratifying for writers to know that their work has had an impact, and I wish I could read and respond to everything that is sent to my […]

The late poet and essayist Nabaneeta Dev Sen was a great writer and a dear friend. She was a woman of extraordinary warmth, generous to a fault and wonderfully witty. She was also a fine cook and gourmet. I treasure my memories of evenings at her house in Kolkata: they were filled not just with […]

Breathing Here Is Injurious To Your Health (Hachette India, 2020) is a compelling first person account of the struggle to bring India’s air pollution crisis to the forefront of the country’s policy priorities. Packed with information, this well-written book also bears witness to the appalling personal losses caused by the subcontinent’s poisoned air.  Particularly striking […]

Given recent developments, few will deny that the increasingly adversarial relationship between India and China is one of the most important factors in the emerging geopolitics of the 21st century. Zorawar Daulet Singh’s Powershift; India-China Relations In A Multipolar World (MacMillan, India, 2020), is therefore a timely addition to the literature on a subject of […]