Himalayan Cornucopia
ChrestomatherThe Centenary Farmers' Market in Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan, is a cornucopia of fresh, organic produce: …
Letter from Kolkata: ‘The Great Derangement’ and a recent storm
On August 17, 2016, Kolkata (Calcutta) was hit by an unusual storm. I received this letter on August 19. It is reproduced here with the writer's permission. Dear Mr. Amitav…
Letter from novelist Aruni Kashyap re ‘The Shadow Lines’
Aruni Kashyap The letter below is from novelist Aruni Kashyap, author of The House With A Thousand Stories (Viking/Penguin, 2013). It is posted here with his permission. …
Extreme Reading
Tabish Khair, picture by Christopher Thomsen Rarely has a novel seemed as timely as Tabish Khair’s Jihadi Jane. As the title implies, this is the story of a radicalized young…
A window into the new China: Lijia Zhang’s ‘Lotus’
I first met Lijia Zhang in 2010, at a literary event in Beijing. She had then recently published a memoir (Socialism…
Indian Merchants and Trading Houses in 19th and 20th century Japan: A Correspondence
Earlier this month I received the following inquiry from a PhD candidate at Japan’s Keio University. Dear Professor Amitav Ghosh, I am a researcher of Indian merchants…
Chennai Floods 2015
Chennai (formerly Madras) was hit by epic floods in November 2015. Although the floods were covered extensively by the media at the time not much has been written about them since, at least in English.…