Rather a thinker (of a different kind) than an author, Amitav Ghosh is the person who has crafted some of the most-discussed fictions on Indian issues. Born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), he lives in the United States at present. Amitav Ghosh used to be the schoolmate of Ramchandra Guha and Vikram Seth, both the well-known names in India as well as abroad. The author of more than a dozen known and well-known works, Amitav Ghosh is widely included in the post-colonial as well as partition literature syllabus of Indian universities.
The journey of author Amitav Ghosh started in 1986 with the publication of The Circle of Reason which went on to win an important French literary prize in 1990. However, the fame came to this India-born author only with the Sahitya Akademi award in 1989 that he got for The Shadow Lines, a fiction work revolving around the 1963-64 communal riots in Dhaka. This book brought recognition for Amitav Ghosh in India as well as in the different parts of the world. Out of Ghosh’s other six fiction works, the novels, the most important ones are Sea of Puppies (2008), The Hungry Tide (2004) and River of Smoke (2011). The novels of Ghosh mostly display the issues which are untouched by other authors or get a lesser share in the representation. For example, The Hungry Tide is full of instances which depict the ecocriticism in full swing as well the need for a ‘natural order’.
Sea of Puppies raises the orthodox issues of Hindu society and depicts the horror of those banned practices which haunted the women for so long. However, some people might focus on the issues of the author and deem those as selective… readers have the final right to judge an author, nevertheless! The recent work by Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement takes on the issues of climate change. This non-fiction book has come out in 2016.
Awarded with several prestigious and some made-and-delivered awards, the novelist enjoys a popularity and respect which put him in a different league. He is not like most of the modern authors who have to compromise their writings for the sake of remaining in the limelight. Amitav Ghosh has been the topic of several literary research papers across the world. The age and the hunger ensure that this author will keep on producing good works like he has been doing for so many years.
