History, Narrative, and Testimony in Amitav Ghosh's Fiction

Download or read book History, Narrative, and Testimony in Amitav Ghosh's Fiction written by Chitra Sankaran and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-03-12 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first collection of international scholarship on the fiction of Amitav Ghosh. Ghosh's work is read by a wide audience and is well regarded by general readers, critics, and scholars throughout the world. Born in India, Ghosh has lived in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. His work spans genres from contemporary realism to historical fiction to science fiction, but has consistently dealt with the dislocations, violence, and meetings of peoples and cultures engendered by colonialism. The essays in this volume analyze Ghosh's novels in ways that yield new insights into concepts central to postcolonial and transnational studies, making important intertextual connections and foregrounding links to prevailing theoretical and speculative scholarship. The work's introduction argues that irony is central to Ghosh's vision and discusses the importance of the concepts of "testimony" and "history" to Ghosh's narratives. An invaluable interview with Amitav Ghosh discusses individual works and the author's overall philosophy.