Amitav Ghosh

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Amitav Ghosh (born 1956), is an Indian-Bengali author known for his work in the English language.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Bibliography 3 Novels 4 Non-Fiction & Essays 5 Awards 6 External links 7 References

[edit] Biography

Ghosh was born in Kolkata and was educated at The Doon School; St. Stephen's College, Delhi; Delhi University; and the University of Oxford, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in social anthropology.^[1]

Ghosh lives in New York with his wife, Deborah Baker, author of the Laura Riding biography In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding (1993) and a senior editor at Little, Brown and Company. They have two children, Lila and Nayan. He has been a Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. In 1999, Ghosh joined the faculty at Queens College, City University of New York as Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature. He has also been a visiting professor to the English department of Harvard University since 2005. Ghosh has recently purchased a property in Goa and is returning to India. He is working on a trilogy to be published by Penguin Books India.

[edit] Bibliography

Ghosh's latest work of fiction is Sea of Poppies (2008) an epic saga, set just before the Opium Wars which encapsulates the colonial history of the East. His other novels are The Circle of Reason (1986), The Shadow Lines (1990), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), The Glass Palace (2000) and The Hungry Tide (2004). The Shadow Lines won the Sahitya Akademi Award, India's most prestigious literary award.^[2] The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for 1997.^[3] Sea of Poppies was shortlisted for the 2008 Booker Prize^[4]. Ghosh's fiction is characterised by strong themes that may be somewhat identified with postcolonialism but could be labelled as historical novels. His topics are unique and personal; some of his appeal lies in his ability to weave "Indo-nostalgic" elements into more serious themes.

Ghosh has also written In an Antique Land (1992), Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma (1998), Countdown (1999), and The Imam and the Indian (2002, a large collection of essays on different themes such as fundamentalism, history of the novel, Egyptian culture, and literature). In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government. ^[5]

[edit] Novels

• The Circle of Reason (1986)
• The Shadow Lines (1990)
• The Calcutta Chromosome (1995)
• The Glass Palace (2000)
• The Hungry Tide (2004)
• Sea of Poppies (2008)

[edit] Non-Fiction & Essays

• An Antique Land (non-fiction)(1992)
• Dancing in Cambodia and At Large in Burma (Collection of Essays)
• The Imam and the Indian (Collection of Essays)
• Incendiary Circumstances (A collection of Essays)(2006)

[edit] Awards

• The Circle of Reason won the Prix Medicis Etranger, one of France's top literary awards^[6]
• The Shadow Lines won the Sahitya Akademi Award & the Ananda Puraskar^[7]
• The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for 1997^[8]
• The Glass Palace won the Grand Prize for Fiction at the Frankfurt International e-Book Awards in 2001^[9]
• The Hungry Tide won the Hutch Crossword Book Prize in 2006
• In 2007 Amitav Ghosh was awarded the Grinzane Cavour Prize in Turin, Italy^[10]
• Sea of Poppies was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker prize

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Sea of Poppies at Farrar, Straus and Giroux site
• Amitav Ghosh in Emory University Site
• Trapped by Language: On Amitav Ghosh's In an Antique Land - University of Denver
• Interview with Amitav Ghosh on CNN-IBN/ibnlive.com on his book Sea of Poppies

[edit] References