Amitav Ghosh | |
|---|---|
 Ghosh in 2017 | |
| Born | 11 July 1956[1] Calcutta (now Kolkata), West Bengal, India |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | Indian[2] |
| Alma mater | University of Delhi (BA, MA) University of Oxford (PhD) |
| Genre | Historical fiction |
| Notable works | The Shadow Lines, The Glass Palace, Ibis trilogy, The Great Derangement |
| Notable awards | Jnanpith Award Sahitya Akademi Award Ananda Puraskar Dan David Prize Padma Shri Erasmus Prize |
| Spouse | Deborah Baker (wife) |
| Website | |
| www | |
Amitav Ghosh (born 11 July 1956)[1] is an Indian writer. He won the 54th Jnanpith award in 2018, India's highest literary honour. Ghosh's ambitious novels use complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal identity, particularly of the people of India and South Asia.[3] He has written historical fiction and non-fiction works discussing topics such as colonialism and climate change.
Ghosh studied at The Doon School, Dehradun, and earned a doctorate in social anthropology at the University of Oxford. He worked at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi and several academic institutions. His first novel, The Circle of Reason, was published in 1986, which he followed with later fictional works, including The Shadow Lines and The Glass Palace. Between 2004 and 2015, he worked on the Ibis trilogy, which revolves around the build-up and implications of the First Opium War. His non-fiction work includes In an Antique Land (1992) and The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016).
Ghosh holds two Lifetime Achievement awards and four honorary doctorates. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India's highest honours, by the President of India. In 2010, he was a joint winner, along with Margaret Atwood, of a Dan David prize, and in 2011, he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis festival in Montreal. He was the first English-language writer to receive the award. In 2019, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade.[4]
- ^ a b Ghosh, Amitav Archived 5 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Encyclopædia Britannica
- ^ Gupte, Masoom (25 November 2016). "The heroic tale of great entrepreneurs is nonsense: Amitav Ghosh". The Economic Times. Archived from the original on 28 November 2016. Retrieved 25 April 2017.
- ^ "Britannica". Archived from the original on 6 September 2015.
- ^ "Amitav Ghosh : Biography". www.amitavghosh.com. Archived from the original on 24 August 2018. Retrieved 14 May 2021.