Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh is one of the most famous Indian authors. The highest literary award in India, the 54th Jnanpith Award, was given to him in 2018. The ambitious books of Ghosh explore the essence of national and human identity, notably that of the people of India and South Asia, using sophisticated narrative techniques. He has authored nonfiction books on subjects like colonialism and climate change in addition to historical fiction.

Ghosh attended The Doon School in Dehradun and then graduated from Oxford University with a degree in social anthropology. He held positions at many academic institutions as well as the New Delhi-based Indian Express newspaper. After the 1986 release of his debut novel The Circle of Reason, he went on to write other fictional works including The Shadow Lines and The Glass Palace. He worked on the Ibis trilogy, which explores the events leading up to and effects of the First Opium War, between 2004 and 2015. His non-fiction works include The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable and In an Antique Land.

Ghosh has received four honorary doctorates and two Lifetime Achievement Awards. He received the Padma Shri, one of India's highest honors, in 2007 from the Indian President. He shared a Dan David prize in 2010 with Margaret Atwood, and in 2011 he won the festival's Grand Prize at Montreal's Blue Metropolis. He was the first author in the English language to win the prize. He was recognized as one of the most significant global thinkers of the last ten years by Foreign Policy magazine in 2019.

Born: 1956

Topics aimed at: nature of national and personal identity