History, Narrative, and Testimony in Amitav Ghosh's Fiction
Chitra Sankaran
State University of New York Press
Comprehensive overview of the work of Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh. This is the first collection of international scholarship on the fiction of Amitav Ghosh. Ghosh’s work is read by a wide audience and is well regarded by general readers, critics, and scholars throughout the world. Born in India, Ghosh has lived in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. His work spans genres from contemporary realism to historical fiction to science fiction, but has consistently dealt with the dislocations, violence, and meetings of peoples and cultures engendered by colonialism. The essays in this volume analyze Ghosh’s novels in ways that yield new insights into concepts central to postcolonial and transnational studies, making important intertextual connections and foregrounding links to prevailing theoretical and speculative scholarship. The work’s introduction argues that irony is central to Ghosh’s vision and discusses the importance of the concepts of “testimony” and “history” to Ghosh’s narratives. An invaluable interview with Amitav Ghosh discusses individual works and the author’s overall philosophy. Chitra Sankaran is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at National University of Singapore and is the author of Myth Connections: The Use of Hindu Myths and Philosophies in R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao, Revised Edition.