Amitav Ghosh Libri

Piya è appena arrivata a Canning, l'ultima fermata per i Sundarban, l'immenso arcipelago che si stende fra il mare e le pianure del Bengala e che, secondo la leggenda, è sorto il giorno in cui la treccia del dio Shiva si è disfatta e i suoi capelli bagnati si sono sciolti in un immenso e intricato groviglio. Piya, giovane biologa marina nata in Bengala ma cresciuta negli Stati Uniti, è arrivata in questo dedalo di fiumi e foreste per scandagliare le profondità marine. Sui corsi d'acqua di mezzo mondo, Piya si è sempre sentita protetta dalla sua inequivocabile estraneità, dai suoi capelli neri corti, dalla sua pelle scura, dai suoi lineamenti delicati di giovane donna indiana. Qui, in un posto in cui si sente più straniera che altrove, sa che il suo aspetto la priva di ogni protezione. Per Kanai Dutt, invece, l'interprete diretto a Lusibari per decifrare un misterioso diario lasciatogli da uno zio, l'arcipelago è soltanto il paesaggio dove poter sfoggiare l'agilità e la prontezza del viaggiatore capace di cogliere istintivamente l'attimo. Soltanto per Fokir, il pescatore, i Sundarban sono il mondo. A bordo della sua barca, fatta di canne, foglie di bambù e fragili assi di legno, Fokir conosce ogni angolo di quest'universo, e sa che qui non esistono confini tra acqua dolce e salata, fiume e mare, terra e acqua, poiché quotidianamente le maree penetrano fin dentro le pianure del Bengala e foreste e isole intere scompaiono.

From the bestselling author of the Ibis trilogy and The Great Derangement, The Nutmeg's Curse is an enthralling, panoramic history of the influence of colonialism on the world today, told through the surprising story of the nutmeg.

It is 1839 and tension has been rapidly mounting between China and British India following the crackdown on opium smuggling by Beijing. With no resolution in sight, the colonial government declares war.One of the vessels requisitioned for the attack, the Hind, travels eastwards from Bengal to China, sailing into the midst of the First Opium War. The turbulent voyage brings together a diverse group of travellers, each with their own agenda to pursue. Among them is Kesri Singh, a sepoy in the East India Company who leads a company of Indian sepoys; Zachary Reid, an impoverished young sailor searching for his lost love, and Shireen Modi, a determined widow en route to China to reclaim her opium-trader husband's wealth and reputation. Flood of Fire follows a varied cast of characters from India to China, through the outbreak of the First Opium War and China's devastating defeat, to Britain's seizure of Hong Kong.

Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability—at the level of literature, history, and politics—to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The extreme nature of today’s climate events, Ghosh asserts, make them peculiarly resistant to contemporary modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable for the novel; they are automatically consigned to other genres. In the writing of history, too, the climate crisis has sometimes led to gross simplifications; Ghosh shows that the history of the carbon economy is a tangled global story with many contradictory and counterintuitive elements. Ghosh ends by suggesting that politics, much like literature, has become a matter of personal moral reckoning rather than an arena of collective action. But to limit fiction and politics to individual moral adventure comes at a great cost. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence—a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all cultural forms. His book serves as a great writer’s summons to confront the most urgent task of our time.

The International Bestseller from the Man Booker Prize shortlisted author 'An absorbing story of a world in transition' JM Coetzee 'A Doctor Zhivago for the Far East' The Independent Rajkumar is only another boy, helping on a market stall in the dusty square outside the royal palace, when the British force the Burmese King, Queen and all the Court into exile. He is rescued by the far-seeing Chinese merchant, and with him builds up a logging business in upper Burma. But haunted by his vision of the Royal Family, he journeys to the obscure town in India where they have been exiled. The story follows the fortunes - rubber estates in Malaya, businesses in Singapore, estates in Burma - which Rajkumar, with his Chinese, British and Burmese relations, friends and associates, builds up - from 1870 through the Second World War to the scattering of the extended family to New York and Thailand, London and Hong Kong in the post-war years.

Novelist and journalist Ghosh has offered firsthand accounts of pivotal world events over the past twenty years. He is an essential voice in forums like The Nation, the New York Times, the New Republic, Granta, and The New Yorker. This book brings together the finest of these pieces for the first time--including many never before published in the U.S.--in a compelling chronicle of the turmoil of our times. In his travels he has walked amid the devastation of the 2004 tsunami, stood on an icy mountaintop on the contested border between India and Pakistan, interviewed Pol Pot's sister-in-law in Cambodia, shared the elation of Egyptians when Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize, and stood with his threatened Sikh neighbors through the riots following Indira Gandhi's assassination. With intelligence and authentic sympathy, he "illuminates the human drama behind the headlines" (Publishers Weekly). Incendiary Circumstances is testimony of an era defined by the ravages of politics and nature.--From publisher description.

A beautifully illustrated fable from Booker-shortlisted author

A stunningly vibrant novel from Amitav Ghosh, author of the internationally acclaimed bestseller The Glass Palace

"The Ibis, loaded to its gunwales with a cargo of indentured servants, is in the grip of a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal; among the dozens flailing for survival are Neel, the pampered raja who has been convicted of embezzlement; Paulette, the French orphan masquerading as a deck hand; and Deeti, the widowed poppy grower fleeing her homeland with her love, Kalua. The storm also threatens the clipper ship Anahita, groaning with the largest consignment of opium ever to leave India for Canton. And the Redruth, a nursery ship, carries "Fitcher' Penrose, a horticulturist determined to track down the priceless treasures of China that are hidden in plain sight: plants that have the power to heal, or beautify, or intoxicate. All will converge in Canton's Fanqui-Town, or Foreign Enclave: a tumultuous world unto itself where civilizations clash and sometime fuse. It is a powder keg awaiting a spark to ignite the Opium Wars. Spectacular coincidences, startling reversals of fortune, and tender love stories abound. But this is much more that an irresistible page-turner. The blind quest for money, the primacy of the drug trade, the concealment of base impulses behind the rhetoric of freedom: in River of Smoke, the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries meet, and the result is a consuming historical novel with powerful contemporary resonance. Critics praised Sea of Poppies for its vibrant storytelling, antic humor, and rich narrative scope; now Amitav Ghosh continues the epic that has charmed and compelled readers all over the globe"--Provided by publisher.