20 Facts About Amitav Ghosh

1.

Amitav Ghosh was born on 11 July 1956 and is an Indian writer.

2.

Amitav Ghosh won the 54th Jnanpith award in 2018, India's highest literary honor.

3.

Amitav Ghosh has written historical fiction and written non-fiction works discussing topics such as colonialism and climate change.

4.

Amitav Ghosh studied at The Doon School, Dehradun, and earned a doctorate in social anthropology at the University of Oxford.

5.

Amitav Ghosh worked at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi and several academic institutions.

6.

Amitav Ghosh holds two Lifetime Achievement awards and four honorary doctorates.

7.

Amitav Ghosh was the first English-language writer to receive the award.

8.

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta on 11 July 1956 and was educated at the all-boys boarding school The Doon School in Dehradun.

9.

Amitav Ghosh grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

10.

Amitav Ghosh then won the Inlaks Foundation scholarship to complete a D Phil.

11.

In 2015 Amitav Ghosh was named a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow.

12.

Amitav Ghosh was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government in 2007.

13.

Amitav Ghosh returned to India to begin working on the Ibis trilogy which includes Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire.

14.

Amitav Ghosh is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide and Gun Island.

15.

Amitav Ghosh began working on what became The Ibis trilogy in 2004.

16.

In 2021, Amitav Ghosh published his first book in verse, Jungle Nama, which explores the Sundarbans legend of Bon Bibi.

17.

Amitav Ghosh's writings appear in newspapers and magazines in India and abroad.

18.

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.

19.

Amitav Ghosh received the lifetime achievement award at Tata Literature Live, the Mumbai LitFest on 20 November 2016.

20.

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.