Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh Biography

Amitav Ghosh is an English fiction writer from Bengal. His noted works are The Circle of Reason (his 1986 debut novel), The Shadow Lines (1988), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), The Glass Palace (2000), The Hungry Tide (2004), and Sea of Poppies (2008) and the latest one being, latest work of fiction is River of Smoke (2011). His debut work earned won the Prix Medicis etranger, one of France's top literary awards. The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1997. The Shadow Lines won the Sahitya Akademi Award and Ananda Puraskar. Sea of Poppies won Vodafone Crossword Book Award in 2009 and the 2010 Dan David Prize (both are co-winners). Same book was nominated for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. River of Smoke was shortlisted for Man Asian Literary Prize 2011. His wife, Deborah Baker is a noted writer and presently the couple resides in New York.

Ghosh was born in Kolkata on July 11, 1956. His father was Lieutenant Colonel Shailendra Chandra Ghosh, a retired officer of the pre-independence Indian Army. His schooling was done at Doon school followed by college studies at St. Stephen's College at Delhi, the Delhi School of Economics and St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He received D. Phil. in social anthropology from Oxford. Once returned he worked in Indian Express newspaper at New Delhi. He has been a Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata and Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. He has also worked as a distinguished professor at Queens College, City University of New York.

Ghosh’s works include both fiction and non-fiction works. In an Antique Land (1992), Dancing in Cambodia and At Large in Burma (1998), Countdown (1999), and The Imam and the Indian (2002) are his famous non-fiction works. He received Padma shree in 2007.

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Updated: April 01, 2014