Drawing on faith and supernatural forces

Amitav Ghosh's latest novel is a page turner, often veering into a realm of magical occurrences, but stretches the reader's beliefs a bit too far

- Somak Ghoshal

Ghosh demonstrates his knowledge of science and local legends as well as reports on the harsh realities that make life precarious in the Sundarbans.

Amitav Ghosh’s new novel, Ghost-Eye, takes ahead the story he had started telling in The Hungry Tide (2004), set in the Sundarbans, in West Bengal’s Gangetic delta region, threatened by climatic upheavals. He retumed to it, along with some of the original cast of characters, more recently in Gun Island (2019), where he expanded the narrative to grapple with environmental catastrophes unfolding in the US and Italy. Between the last novel and this one, he published a translation of the folklore of Bonbibi Johuranama, also indigenous to the Sundarbans, deftly rendering it into a meter that mimicked the original dwipodi poyar, or the two-footed line. Along the way, Ghosh has also written nonfiction on related crises in books like The Great Derangement (2016), The Nutmeg’s Curse (2021) and Wild Fictions (2025).

All these works, written over two decades of research and travel, are connected by the theme of climate change, caused as much by avaricious capitalists as by general apathy. Intrusions by miners and real-estate mafia are upsetting the fragile ecosystem and rich biodiversity of ancient regions, spawning global calamities in the form of rising sea levels, wildfires, earthquakes and pandemics. Ghosh has not only demonstrated his knowledge of scientific literature and local legends while telling these stories, but also faithfully reported on the harsh realities that make life precarious in these vulnerable parts.

Apart from the propulsive force of his storytelling, it is Ghosh’s keen observational skill that has painted an authentic portrait of suffering wrought by the ongoing climate crisis on people living on the margins. And it is this strain of authenticity that has made all his books, haunted by supernatural forces, attractive and thought-provoking to readers.