What makes a writer? How does a literary life come into being, especially one whose career spans over twenty-five years? Between the parentheses of textuality lies an assessment of the experiences, questions, and inheritances that shape both the writer and the practice of writing. Amitav Ghosh is a household name in India, with many of his writings featuring in university syllabi. During my Master’s at Delhi University’s Department of History, In an Antique Land was essential reading in a paper on film and fiction. A motley group of around sixteen students gathered in a classroom of creaky chairs and slanting afternoon sunlight to talk about the sights, sounds and impressions encountered by a young Ghosh in a small Egyptian village as part of his doctoral fieldwork in anthropology. It was only while reading Wild Fictions that I learnt that Ghosh had, from a young age, been driven by a yearning for travel and to write about it, going to the extent of submitting his resume at the different Embassies in Delhi in the hopes of securing a job abroad. It was a scholarship that finally brought him to England, marking the beginning of numerous journeys to come. Could the young doktor, as the Egyptian villagers called him, have imagined that he would go on to become one of the subcontinent’s most celebrated literary voices?
August 2025, volume 49, No 8