Amitav Ghosh: The Spaces We Inhabit

The Spaces We Inhabit

Best known for his Ibis trilogy, Amitav Ghosh is a colossus of postcolonial literature. His book 'Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories' was shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize in 2024, a non-fiction book prize that recognises work that searches for truth and reason in difficult places, and shines a light on the connections and divisions that shape cultural identity worldwide.

Join us for 'The Spaces We Inhabit', a special British Academy event at Edinburgh International Book Festival. Hear the venerated writer to discuss his new book 'Wild Fictions', an extraordinary collection of his writing from the last 25 years. Covering a sweeping gamut of urgent and compelling themes relating to the ways in which we understand and interact with our world, this is a conversation not to be missed.

Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta, and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; he studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria. He is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction including 'The Shadow Lines', 'The Glass Palace', 'The Hungry Tide', the Ibis Trilogy (comprising the novels 'Sea of Poppies', 'River of Smoke' and 'Flood of Fire'), 'Gun Island', 'The Great Derangement', 'The Nutmeg’s Curse', 'Jungle Nama' and 'The Living Mountain'.

Amitav Ghosh’s work has been translated into more than 30 languages. He has been awarded and felicitated across the world. In 2019, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the past decade. The same year, the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honour, was conferred on him: he was the first English-language writer to receive it. In 2024 Amitav Ghosh was awarded the Erasmus Prize and shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize in changing the way we perceive our shared world.

'Wild Fictions' brings together Amitav Ghosh’s extraordinary writing on the subjects that have obsessed him over the last twenty-five years: literature and language; climate change and the environment; human lives, travel, and discoveries. The spaces that we inhabit, and the way in which we occupy them, is a constant thread throughout this striking and expansive collection.

With the combination of moral passion, intellectual curiosity and literary elegance that defines his writing, Amitav Ghosh makes us understand the world in new, and urgent, ways. Together, the pieces within 'Wild Fictions' chart a course that allows us to heal our relationships and restore a delicate balance with the volatile landscapes to which we all belong.

Edinburgh International Book Festival

Edinburgh International Book Festival is the world-leading festival of words, literature, and ideas.

Every August in Edinburgh, the Festival presents the largest public celebration of the written word in the world, bringing together over 500 events with the most exciting writers and thinkers on the planet to ignite imaginations, foster human connection, and challenge the status quo.

Photo credit: Mathieu Genon