Amitav Ghosh

Master prose stylist Amitav Ghosh will deliver a major lecture on the political and philosophical challenges posed by climate change. Ghosh is the author of many works of fiction and collections of essays, including The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, and The Hungry Tide.

About his most recent book, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, Roy Scranton says “With the deftness of a master storyteller and the powerful vision of a keen political observer, Ghosh traces the complex ways that globalization, empire, and the bourgeois novel are entangled with the history of carbon and our contemporary climate crisis. A thrilling, often brilliant work of synthesis and imagination, The Great Derangement is essential reading for anyone trying to understand what the Anthropocene means for our human future.”

Ghosh’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He has taught in many universities in India and the USA, including Delhi University, Columbia, Queens College and Harvard. In January 2007 he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest honors, by the President of India. In 2010, Amitav Ghosh was awarded honorary doctorates by Queens College, New York, and the Sorbonne, Paris. Along with Margaret Atwood, he was also a joint winner of a Dan David Award for 2010.

Open to the public.

Sponsored by the Kroc Insitute for International Peace Studies, the Liu Institute for Asian Studies, the Department of English, and the Creative Writing Program.