INTRODUCTION Amitav Ghosh undoubtedly occupied an undefeatable position in the galaxy of Indian writers in English. He has contributed immensely to make Indian writings acclaimed worldwide. Most of his writings involve the themes of exile, cultural displacement, revolution, emigration, dislocation, loss of identity, uprooting that characterizes into historical novels. He recuperates the irony, disillusionment, dilemma and ambiguity of human condition of a bygone era through his language. He masterfully
QUEEN SUPAYALAT Amitav Ghosh weaves the character of Queen Supayalat from the history of Burma. She was the daughter of King Mindon Min and Queen of Alenandaw and the last queen of Burma who reigned in Mandalay (1878–1885). She was married to her half-brother, Thibaw, the last king of the Konbaung dynasty. She was considered as vindictive, unforgiving and an imperious woman. She never regarded herself beholden to the British as she believed that they robbed her of her kingdom with all the wealth
sense of self does that help form a strong cultural identity? Do we need to have 'real' territory to have cultural identity or can imaginative geography and history help intensify ones cultural identity and belongingness? In this essay, I will use Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Shadow Lines and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake. I will examine through the characters of Tha'mma and Ila in Ghosh's novel and Ashima and Gogol in Lahiri's novel and how their depictions of diasporic experience results in; vexed questions
Anita Desai, Sashi Deshpande, Sashi Tharoor, Salman Rusdie, Shobha De, Manju Kapoor, Amitav Ghosh etc. deal with this theme minutely in Indian social milieu. Amitav Ghosh, an anthropologist-cum-novelist possesses a deep knowledge of human psyche regarding man-woman relationships. He is concerned with the inner world of his characters. He tries to lo... ... middle of paper ... ...ndation Books, 2005. …….…, “Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and the Blurring of National Boundaries”. Conference issue
Amitav Ghosh’s novel Sea of Poppies is a description of colonialism and its effect on the environment. The novel deals with the cultivation of opium and its harmful effect on the life of the people and the environment. In my paper, I will be dealing with the changes that occur due to the cultivation of opium and how its addiction leads to the death of Hukum Singh. People are compelled by the British to grow opium in their fields. Opium affects the normal behavior of birds, animals and insects in
Amitav Ghosh’s fiction story The Shadow Lines is known as an outstanding book and won the Saahitya Akademi Award for English and the Ananda Puraskar Award. The Shadow Lines consists of two hundred and forty six pages and was published in 1988 by Ravi Dayal Publishers. The novel discusses different historical events that bring people together and keep them apart. The story is told from the narrators point of view. The narrator is a young boy growing up in Calcutta that is joined with the Prices
Amitav Ghosh,a man of versatile genius, ranks with Mulk Raj Anand and R.K. Narayan. His fame rests in his sharp and penetrating sensitivity in depicting the human travelogue at microcosmic as well as epic scale. Amitav Ghosh's training as an anthropologist has been an important formative factor in his books. Travelling comes naturally to him. As such much of what he has written is travel based but this small book ‘Countdown’(1999) is a pure travelogue by Amitav Ghosh. The present paper is an attempt
Amitav Ghosh’s Shadow Lines challenges our understanding of points of reference by examining the shadowy borders between the self and other’s perceptions of the self. The narrator portrays Tridib’s internal struggle to become a heroic, active figure in contrast to the passive figure that May believes him to be. Ghosh explores Tridib’s attempts to create a coherent self-identity by considering what it means to be considered a success, what qualities constitute a hero, and how one can reconcile the
History in Amitav Ghosh’s works is not only a narrative of historical events but also a means of establishing an interconnection between the historical events and the ordinary individuals living during the times. The individual is hit by a historical impact and his story needs narration as much as to the country he belongs. Amitav Ghosh tries to reject the traditional mode of writing history and presents largely a re-visiting and a re-examination of history. Therefore it becomes necessary to understand
CULTURAL FEATURES OF TIDECOUNTRY IN AMITAV GHOSH’S “THE HUNGRY TIDE” Amitav Ghosh’s “The Hungry Tide” has been published in 2004 and this book has won “hutch crossword award” and it is known as one of the best work among English fiction. This book is a “unique combination of Anthropology, migration, travel, ethnography etc”. There are many colonial and post-colonial references regarding the history of Sundarbans. The novel the setting is largely covered by sundari trees or mangroves. That’s the
new dreams in a Newfoundland. But the very same resettlement changes the life of the people. What awaits them there is a new culture, a new society and a new language that are completely different and new to them In the novel The Hungry Tide Amitav Ghosh draws the picture of the victims of partition who were displaced from their homeland. The life of the Bengali Hindus was not a different one. They were considered as a burden by the West Bengal government and they developed a final solution to
Book Review: Amitav Ghosh In an Antique Land “The only people for whom we can even begin to imagine properly human, individual, existences are the literate and the consequential, the wazirs and the sultans, the chroniclers, and the priests—the people who had the power to inscribe themselves physically upon time” (Ghosh 17). History is written by the victorious, influential and powerful; however, history has forgotten the people whose voices were seized, those who were illiterate and ineloquent,
NARRATOLOGY AND HISTORY In his novels Amitav Ghosh wants to reflect diverse shades of history predominantly through the eyes of distressed rather than the commanding and tormenting powers in the society. He imagines that history and accounts have fundamentally the same function. One needs to go through narrative to confront the surface of the story just as one has to travel through history to encounter pre-history. He accepts that he has always been enamoured by history. Amitav Ghosh’s novel River of Smoke
Conclusion According to Tanveer Hasan in his case study of Amitav Ghosh’s novels of Indian-American Diasporic Literature, One might argue that there are instances in the characters created by Ghosh who cling to memories more than they cling to their sanity. One cannot of course deny the important role memories have to play in framing or reframing the psyche of an individual, par when they have undergone a harrowing experience such as ‘cultural displacement, factional uprooting, secession claims
Therefore, the obligation to address climate change falls on all the nations. But why are the problems of climate change so difficult to think clearly about and act efficiently? To start with, the rapid industrialization of the major Asian nations, especially India and China, amplified the ongoing crisis. And since the impact of Western countries are indirect, they are unwilling to sacrifice their current benefits by cutting down on emissions. Stephen M. Gardiner examines this phenomenon in his paper
political history of the mid- nineteenth century. The first half of the nineteenth century saw gradual improvement of English education in India. The works of modern Indian writers reflected the Indianised English, Salman Rushidie, Shashi Tharoor and Amitav Ghosh. After Independence, India was faced with a number of crises including social, political and economic. Contemporary Indian English writers were conscious about their own culture and traditions. While some of the authors pen in English, most of
From the onset of the twentieth century there has been an ongoing debate on context and text. Literary theorists all over the world propounded many theories that either divorced the two or made their bond stronger. From the 1920s there came a wave of critical theories, the New Critics pleaded for critical monism. The New Criticism took the poem as a work of art, a structure having an independent existence. They completely divorced the work of art from the biographical, sociological context; removed
“THE CIVILIZATION IN AMITAV GHOSH’S NOVELS” INTRODUCTION English is a foreign language but since the British came to India the language has an impact on several fields in education, literary effort and as a medium of communication. Indian English Literature refers to that body of work by writers from India, who writes in the English language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous regional and indigenous languages of India. English literature in India is also
white, an Indian female farmer has been rescued from sati, a French women disguised as an Indian labourer, a British opium merchant, a half-Paris and half-Chinese convict these are some of the “mongrel” characters with complex histories that populate Amitav Ghosh’s most recent novel Sea of Poppies. Sea of Poppies tells the story of how it is that in the ship Ibis, headed to Caribbean sugar plantations, small new worlds are forged, bringing together north Indian women, Bengali Zamindars, black
classical music, his romanticism, his welter of emotions, all come through very effectively. The Kolkata born, Vikram Seth deserves to be next on the list. The man of many languages and wise businessman penned outstanding works like "The Golden Gate", "A Suitable Boy", "An Equal Music", and "Two Lives". The first book written by him was in verse form and records the lives of young professionals in San Francisco. "A Suitable Boy", 1441 paged novel pushed him into the lime light. The book brimmed with