Wild Fictions - by Amitav Ghosh (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Wild Fictions brings together twenty-five years of Amitav Ghosh's writing on literature and language, climate change and the environment, travel, and historical lives. Taken together, Ghosh's essays form a constellation of the themes central to his fiction and nonfiction over the past two decades: imperialism and decolonization, climate change, and the stories of ordinary individuals making lives amid these historical forces. Among the highlights are essays that revisit Ghosh's time as an aspiring writer and anthropologist in an Egyptian village in the early 1980s, that recover writings by Indian veterans of World War I, and that recount the lives of the multiethnic crewmen-the laskars-who worked the sailing ships of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and populate Ghosh's most successful novels. Included as well are Ghosh's afterthoughts on his highly influential book The Great Derangement and a rich correspondence with historian Dipesh Chakrabarty. Throughout, the spirit of these pieces reflects what Ghosh calls his xenophilia-an affinity for strangers-and a wish to reclaim a cosmopolitanism that flourished in the Global South before it was interrupted by colonialism"--

Book Synopsis

From the 2025 recipient of the Pak Kyongni Prize, often referred to as Korea's Nobel Prize in Literature.

A collection of essays on themes central to Ghosh's work: imperialism and decolonization, climate change, and the stories of ordinary people making lives amid these historical forces.

Wild Fictions brings together Amitav Ghosh's extraordinary writings on subjects that have obsessed him over the last twenty-five years: literature and language; climate change and the environment; and human lives, travel, and discoveries. Threaded throughout the collection are his reflections on the spaces that we inhabit and how we occupy them. From the significance of the commodification of the clove to the diversity of the mangrove forests in Bengal and the radical fluidity of multilingualism, Wild Fictions is a powerful refutation of imperial violence, a fascinating exploration of the fictions we weave to absorb history, and a reminder of the importance of sensitivity and empathy.

With the combination of moral passion, intellectual curiosity, and literary elegance that defines his writing, Ghosh makes readers understand the world in new and urgent ways. Together, the pieces in Wild Fictions chart a course that allows us to heal our relationships and restore the delicate balance with the volatile landscapes to which we all belong.

Review Quotes

"Readers new to Ghosh will find much to lead them to his major work, especially his subtle blend of personal reflection and political polemic."

-- "Kirkus"

About the Author

Amitav Ghosh is a novelist and essayist whose many books include the acclaimed Ibis Trilogy (Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire), Gun Island, Jungle Nama: A Story of the Sundarban, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, and The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, the latter two also published by the University of Chicago Press. He is the 2025 recipient of the Pak Kyongni Prize, often referred to as Korea's Nobel Prize in Literature.