Mekong Journals: 6
ChrestomatherThe dolphin pools have very distinctive shapes and the dolphins seem to dislike certain kinds of underwater topography. Isabel and her associates take regular soundings of the…
Mekong Journals: 5
While speaking of Pilleri’s experiments with Indus dolphins (the animals he took to Switzerland) I mentioned one of his findings* – which was that he’d found the…
Mekong Journals: 4
Altogether Isabel recognizes some seven or eight individual dolphins and she has even named some of them. Most of them have Cambodian names. ‘Clasico’ was caught near Phnom…
Mekong Journals: 3
January 7, 2003 Out on the river: at 7 this morning we set off in a Fisheries department boat, to spend the day on the river. We made…
Mekong Journals: 2
Amitav GhoshKratie, Cambodia, January 6, 2003 At 4 in the afternoon we went out to the observation platform where Isabel spends most of her time when she…
Mekong Journals: 1
January 5, 2003 Kratie Cambodia The town looks handsome from the river. There is a line of freshly-painted villas and the landing consists of a steep flight…
Jonathan Spence
The 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…