History, Narrative, and Testimony in Amitav Ghosh's Fiction , livre ebook

History, Narrative, and Testimony in Amitav Ghosh's Fiction
Edited by Chitra Sankaran

Cover photograph of Amitav Ghosh by Ulf Andersen.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2012 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Ryan Morris Marketing by Kate McDonnell
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
History, narrative, and testimony in Amitav Ghosh's fiction / edited by Chitra Sankaran.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4181-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Ghosh, Amitav—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Literature and history. 3. Indic literature (English)—20th century—History and criticism. I. Chitra Sankaran
PR9499.3.G536Z73 2012
823'.914—dc22
2011019401
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Shiva, Sanjeev, Lavanya, Divyan, and Arjun
Chronological Bioprofile
1956: Born in Calcutta on 11 July; father: Shailendra Chandra Ghosh, with the Indian army, diplomat; mother: Ansali Ghosh. Accompanies parents to East Pakistan, Iran, and Srilanka in his childhood.
1969–1973: Completes his Senior Cambridge at Doon School, Dehra Dun, India.
1974–1976: Studies for a bachelor's degree in history and graduates from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University.
1978: Obtains a master's in sociology from Delhi University.
1979: Attends St. Edmund Hall, Oxford to pursue postgraduate work, and in 1979 obtains a diploma in social anthropology.
1982: Awarded doctorate of philosophy for his thesis on “Kinship in Relation to the Economic and Social Organization of an Egyptian Village Community.” During this period he acquires a diploma in Arabic at Institut Bourguiba des Langues Vivantes Tunis in Tunisia. He later travels to Egypt to conduct fieldwork. This period is sketched later in his creative nonfiction, In an Antique Land .
1982–1983: Appointed Visiting Fellow, Centre for Developmental Studies, Trivandrum, Kerala (India).
1983–1987: Appointed Research Associate, Department of Sociology, Delhi University.
1986: The Circle of Reason is published. Also, the essay “The Imam and the Indian,” Granta 20 (Cambridge).
1987: Appointed Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Delhi University. Awarded the New York Times Notable Book for The Circle of Reason .
1988: Appointed Visiting Professor, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, departments of Literature and Anthropology; The Shadow Lines published; revisits Egypt.
1989: Appointed Visiting Professor, South Asia Centre, Columbia University, spring semester and Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, fall semester.
1990: Awarded Prix Medicis étrangère in Paris for The Circle of Reason ; awarded the Ananda Puraskar, Calcutta, for The Shadow Lines . Awarded the annual prize of the Sahitya Akademi (Indian Academy of Literature) for The Shadow Lines .
1991: Invited guest of the Minister of Culture, International Book Festival, Fureur de Lire, Paris, France, September; “The Cairo Geniza and the Indian Ocean in the Middle Ages,” Stanford University, May, invited speaker; readings from the manuscript of In an Antique Land , University of California, Santa Cruz, May.
1992: Published In an Antique Land , which was the subject of forty-minute TV documentary by BBC III that year.
1993: In an Antique Land wins New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
1994: Appointed Visiting Professor, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University, New York, for three years.
1995: His essay “The Ghost of Mrs. Gandhi” awarded the Best American Essay. Begins reporting for The New Yorker ; invited guest, Sydney Writers' Festival and Carnival, Sydney, Australia, January; invited inaugural speaker, Gandhi exhibition, Bose-Pacia Gallery, New York; invited guest speaker, South Asian Journalists Association, New York, October; invited speaker: “ ‘The Angel of Chartres is a Cambodian’: Rodin, Revolution and Cambodian Dance,” Department of Art History, Lectures in the History of Art and Visual Culture series, Columbia University, November.
1996: The Calcutta Chromosome is published. It is awarded the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction of the year.
1997: Essay “India's Untold War of Independence,” published in The New Yorker , June 17; translation in Bengali: Ananda Bazaar Patrika , 5 installments, August–September; translation in German: Lettre 38, no. 3.
1998: Published Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma ; published “Calcutta's Global Ambassador,” New York Times (Op-Ed), March 14; published “The March of the Novel through History: The Testimony of My Grandfather's Bookcase,” Kunapipi: A Journal of Post-Colonial Writing .
1999: “The March of the Novel” wins the Pushcart Prize; appointed Distinguished Professor for four years, Department of Comparative Literature, Queen's College, City University of New York; Countdown is published; it is in the final shortlist for the American Society of Magazine Editors Award for Reporting.
2000: The Glass Palace is published. Ghosh declines the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
2001: The Glass Palace wins the Grand Prize for Fiction at the Frankfurt eBook Awards; New York Times Notable Book of 2001; Los Angeles Times Notable Book of 2001; Chicago Tribune Favorite Book of 2001; The Glass Palace featured on German TV, BBC East Asia, KVON Radio (L.A.), CNN International, WNYC (Leonard Lopate).
2002: The volume of essays The Imam and the Indian: Prose Pieces is published; The Glass Palace , paperback release, readings: Milwaukee, Madison, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, February to March.
2003: Published essays “The Anglophone Empire” and “The Man behind the Mosque.”
2004: The Hungry Tide is published; appointed Visiting Professor, Department of English, Harvard University.
2005: Incendiary Circumstances : A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times is published in the United States.
2006: The Hungry Tide wins the Hutch Crossword Book Prize.
2007: Awarded Padmashree by the government of India in recognition of his distinguished contributions in the field of literature; also awarded the Grinzane Cavour Prize in Turin, Italy, for literary contributions that have an international perspective.
2008: Sea of Poppies is published, the first in the forthcoming Ibis trilogy; shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
2009: Sea of Poppies is winner of the Vodafone Crossword Book Award.
2010: Ghosh declared co-winner along with Margaret Atwood of the Dan David Prize for his literary achievements.
Introduction
Beyond Borders and Boundaries
CHITRA SANKARAN
“L IKE THE OPIUM that forms its subject, the narrative becomes increasingly powerful and addictive as it takes hold,” 1 writes William Dalrymple, author of The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty on Amitav Ghosh's most recent novel, Sea of Poppies , which was published in 2008. The novel, the first in a projected trilogy, made it to the Man Booker Prize shortlist (though not winning it), the first of Amitav Ghosh's novels to do so. It later went on to win the Vodafone Crossword Book Award in 2009. But Ghosh is no stranger either to international awards or to controversies surrounding them, as the most recent Dan David Prize for his literary achievements, partially funded by Tel-Aviv University, which he won along with Margaret Atwood in May 2010, illustrates. Indeed, 2007, the year previous to the publication of Sea of Poppies , was another year of achievements for Amitav Ghosh. He won the Grinzane Cavour Prize, an annual literary prize instituted by the Instituto Italiano di Cultura for literary contributions that have an international perspective; and he was also awarded the prestigious Padmashree by the government of India in recognition of his distinguished contributions to the field of literature. It is therefore timely that the accomplishments of this now established diasporic Indian writer are recorded and analyzed.
This volume has been planned with a view to presenting a comprehensive collection of critical essays that discuss all of Ghosh's fictional output thus far. The essays are by scholars from around the world who are currently working on Amitav Ghosh, with several of the contributors based in Southeast Asia, a space crucial to the history of Indian diaspora and indeed also to Ghosh's fictional landscape. These are important and necessary voices to add to the critical conversation on Ghosh. The volume aims to bring together several viewpoints not constrained by any pre-worked conceptual framework but that attempt in their varied ways to demonstrate the far-reaching scope of the scholarship that surrounds Ghosh's works to date. Published outside India, with only Indian diasporics or non-Indian scholars contributing, this volume can legitimately lay claim to being the first truly international critical volume on Amitav Ghosh, if one succumbs to such essentializing categories.
The volume also includes an in-depth interview w