‘Living with Disasters’
ChrestomatherI just finished reading Amites Mukhopadhyay's Living with Disasters: Communities and Development in the Indian Sundarbans (Cambridge University Press, 2016). …
Letter from Amsterdam
Dear Mr. Ghosh, I recently came across your Ibis trilogy and read them all in one go. I was just mesmerised with both the story and learning about the history…
‘We are really running out of time’: a comment on my co-authored piece in the Guardian
On January 31st, Dr. Aaron Lobo, a marine conservationist, and I published a co-authored article in the Guardian, entitled Bay of Bengal: depleted fish stocks and huge dead…
Victor Rangel Ribeiro’s ‘The Miscreant’
Victor Rangel Ribeiro published his first novel in 1998, at the age of seventy-two. It took its name from a fictional village, Tivolem, and is among the finest novels ever…
Himalayan Cornucopia
The 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. …
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.…