Jonathan Spence
Amitav GhoshThe historian Jonathan Spence is one of my literary heroes, not least because he has done more than any historian of the post-war era to restore history…
‘Chai’ and Dan dan noodles
As described in my last post, I recently received the following message from M.V. Ramana. Dear Amitav, Greetings from Princeton. I am enjoying River of Smoke, but a…
M.V. Ramana and Nuclear Sanity
I met M.V. Ramana in 1998 when I was writing Countdown, my essay on the nuclear situation in the Indian subcontinent. He was one of the most knowledgeable of…
Letter from Australia
Dear Jim I wrote to the email above but never heard back, so I don't know if you received my email. I just…
Indira Goswami
I was deeply saddened to learn of Indira Goswami’s death on November 29. I first met Indiraji in Delhi in the 1980s. She was one of the…
Orissa Mining Activist Arrested
Felix Padel, co-author of Out of This Earth (see my post of July 19) has circulated the following statement with this accompanying note: State repression against villagers refusing to…
Light under a bushel?
Murali Ranganathan is among the most interesting of the many people who have come into my life through book releases and readings. I met him at the Mumbai release…
letter from a teenager
Dear Amitav Ghosh, I am a 14 year old teenager from Mysore, India and a HUGE fan of your writing and I seriously think you are India's finest English author…
Roman Modern
Rome's MAXXI - the National Museum of 21st Century Art - is one the Via Guido Reni, in the Flaminia neighbourhood. …
A Roman Secret
The Locarno is a small hotel on the Via della Penna, just around the corner from the Piazza del…