Amitav Ghosh in Munich

“One Book - Many Worlds,” kicked-off with a vistit of the author and anthropologist Amitav Gosh in Munich from Sunday to Wednesday, 17–20 November 2024. The week explored the role that art and humanistic perspectives can play in tackling the challenges of climate change in conversation with Ghosh—one of the leading theorists of climate change imaginaries today. 

Events with Amitav Ghosh

• Sunday, 17 November 2024, 11:00: "Die Muskatnuss und die Planetare Krise." Matinée #mce_temp_url#at Literaturhaus
• Tueday, 19 November 2024, 18:00: "Das Unvorstellbare denken, das Unglaubliche schreiben. Diskussionsabend #mce_temp_url#zu Klimawandel und kreativem Schreiben mit Amitav Ghosh" at ÖBZ. 
• Wednesday, 20 November 2024. 18:30: "Hiding From the Apocalypse. How the World's Wealthiest View the Future." Lecture #mce_temp_url#at LMU’s Große Aula.

About Gun Island

The novel Gun Island offers the perfect platform for engaging with a multitude of pressing issues. The novel tells the story of Brooklyn antiquarian Deen Dutta, who finds himself on a turbulent historical scavenger hunt around the world, bringing him face to face with old and new acquaintances, a medieval Bengali legend, and the consequences of climate change. From Calcutta to Los Angeles to Venice, on his travels Deen encounters both the realities of the current climate catastrophe and the mythical and unreal experiences that mark Ghosh’s prose and his long-standing critique of globalization.

About the Author

Indian author and anthropologist Amitav Ghosh has addressed the human cost of the major ecological challenges of our time in his works as almost no other contemporary public intellectual.

His 2016 book The Great Derangement aptly diagnosed the contemporary crisis of imagination in the face of climate change as a heritage not only of capitalism but also colonialism. His fictional work, from the awarded Ibis Trilogy (2008–2015) through Gun Island’s precursor The Hungry Tide (2004) to Gun Island (2019), has engaged ecological and (post)colonial concerns through a variety of genres. He has been ranked as one of the most important global thinkers of our time by Foreign Policy Magazine and consistently demonstrates the importance of engaging with challenges like global warming, climate migration, and mass extinction from a cultural and humanistic perspective.

Ghosh obtained his BA and MA from University of Delhi while also working as a newspaper reporter and editor. He then attended University of Oxford, where he received his PhD in social anthropology in 1982. From 2004, the author turned to writing full-time while dividing his time between the United States and India.

His works have been awarded various prizes including, among others, the Prix Médicis étranger, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Grand Prize for Fiction of the Frankfurt eBook Awards, the Grinzane Cavour Prize, and the Jnanpith Award, the highest literary award in India. He has been the recipient of four honorary doctorates and two Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Photo Credit Amitav Ghosh: Mathieu Génon.