1. Amitav Ghosh won the 54th Jnanpith award in 2018, India's highest literary honour.
17 Facts About Amitav Ghosh
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Amitav Ghosh has written historical fiction and non-fiction works discussing topics such as colonialism and climate change.
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Amitav Ghosh studied at The Doon School, Dehradun, and earned a doctorate in social anthropology at the University of Oxford.
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Amitav Ghosh worked at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi and several academic institutions.
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Amitav Ghosh holds two Lifetime Achievement awards and four honorary doctorates.
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Amitav Ghosh was the first English-language writer to receive the award.
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Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta on 11 July 1956 and was educated at the all-boys boarding school The Doon School in Dehradun.
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Amitav Ghosh grew up in India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.
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Amitav Ghosh's thesis, undertaken in the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography, was entitled, "Kinship in relation to economic and social organization in an Egyptian village community", and submitted in 1982.
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Amitav Ghosh returned to India to begin working on the Ibis trilogy, which includes Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire.
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In 2007, Amitav Ghosh was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government.
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In 2021, Amitav Ghosh published his first book in verse, Jungle Nama, which explores the Sundarbans legend of Bon Bibi.
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Amitav Ghosh's writings have appeared in newspapers and magazines in India and abroad.
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Amitav Ghosh famously withdrew his novel The Glass Palace from consideration for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, where it was awarded the best novel in the Eurasian section, citing his objections to the term "Commonwealth" and the unfairness of the English-language requirement specified in the rules.
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Amitav Ghosh received a lifetime achievement award at Tata Literature Live, the Mumbai LitFest, on 20 November 2016.
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Amitav Ghosh was conferred the 54th Jnanpith award in December 2018 and is the first Indian writer in English to have been chosen for this honour.
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Amitav Ghosh wields his pen to show that the climate crisis is a cultural crisis that results from a dearth of the imagination.