Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh (2007)

Amitav Ghosh ( Bengali : অমিতাভ ঘোষ , Amitābh Ghoṣ ; born July 11, 1956 in Kolkata ( Calcutta ), West Bengal ) is an Indian writer who writes in English .

Life

Ghosh spent his childhood in Bangladesh , Sri Lanka and northern India. He studied history in Delhi and was active in the opposition during the reign of Indira Gandhi . He received his PhD in social anthropology from St Edmund Hall at Oxford University and then taught himself at a university in Delhi. Ghosh lives in New York . He writes in English; both novels and essays. In it he mainly deals with his homeland, the Indian subcontinent, which he travels frequently. He was best known for his novel The Glass Palace, set in colonial Burma (The Glass Palace ). For this literary text he researched the living conditions and history of India and Burma for several years.

plant

Ghosh often deals with the climate crisis in his work . In his book Gun Island , the protagonist is confronted with their consequences and the associated migration at several locations. He demands that Western literature take greater account of climate change. He argues that Western literature, with the exception of science fiction, steers clear of climate change and explains this with Western literary history: The improbable, unpredictable, magical and monstrous in nature were banned from novels in the 19th century in favor of bourgeois narration been slammed and the nature of science slammed.

Honors (selection)

• 1997: Arthur C. Clarke Award for The Calcutta Chromosome
• 2007: Honored with the Padma Shri order
• 2018: Jnanpith Award

Works (selection)

Essays

• Times of happiness in misery. Indian moments. Karl-Blessing-Verlag , Munich 2006, ISBN 3-89667-314-9 .
• The great delusion. Climate change as the unthinkable. Blessing, Munich 2017, ISBN 3-89667-584-2 .

Novels

• Bengal Fire or The Power of Reason. (The Circle of Reason, 1986), German by Dirk van Gunsteren , Rowohlt, Reinbek 1989, ISBN 3-498-02448-5 .
• The Calcutta Chromosome. Novel. (The Calcutta Chromosome) Goldmann, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-442-72489-9 .
• The glass palace. (The Glass Palace) Blessing, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-89667-303-3 .
• Hunger of the tides. (The hungry tide) Goldmann, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-442-73497-5 .
• In an old country. (In an antique land) Goldmann, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-442-72997-1 .
• The poppy red sea. (Sea of ​​Poppies) Heyne, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-453-40597-4 .
• The River of Smoke Blessing, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-89667-360-2 .
• Shadow lines. (The shadow lines) Goldmann, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-442-72998-X .
• The flood of fire. (Flood of Fire) Blessing, Munich 2016, ISBN 3-89667-361-0 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Amitav Ghosh in the catalog of the German National Library
• Amitav Ghosh in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (English)
• Official website of the author

proof

1. ↑ Max Böhnel: Ghosh: Western literature steers clear of climate change. In: Deutschlandfunk , September 15, 2019, accessed on September 27, 2019.
2. ^ Georg Ehring: Climate Change: The Missing Confrontation. In the knowledge. Climate change has long been researched extensively, but it is rarely discussed in the literature. The Indian author Amitav Ghosh has dealt with why this is so. Deutschlandfunk.de, November 6, 2017, accessed on November 16, 2017 . 
3. ↑ Johannes Kaiser: Seeing eyes in the climate catastrophe. - Deutschlandfunk on November 15, 2017