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Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Amitav Ghosh is the author of the bestselling Ibis Trilogy, composed of Sea of Poppies (short-listed for the Man Booker Prize), River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire. His other novels include The Circle of Reason, which won the Prix Médicis étranger, and The Glass Palace. He is also the author of many works of nonfiction, including The Great Derangement, The Nutmeg's Curse, and Smoke and Ashes. In 2018, Ghosh became the first English-language writer to win the Jnanpith Award, India's highest literary honor. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Amitav Ghosh's website
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In two separate interviews, Amitav Ghosh discusses Sea of Poppies and The Glass Palace.
Amitav Ghosh discusses Sea of Poppies
How long did it take you to write Sea of
Poppies?
About four years.
How much research did you have to undertake
for details such as nautical references and the language used?
I love nineteenth-century nautical fiction so many of
the details were just buried in my head. As for the rest, it was so
deeply pleasurable, I don't know whether I should even call it
research. I traveled to Mauritius, to look at the National Archives and
some other libraries; I spent some time in Greenwich, England, looking
at the magnificent collection of the National Maritime Museum. But the
best part of all was learning to sail—that was an experience that
surpassed everything I had imagined.
How much of a challenge was it to write the
language used by the lascars?
A ship manned by lascars must have been a kind of
floating babel. Sailors from all around the Indian Ocean went by the
name 'lascar'—East Africans, South Asians, Filipinos, Chinese, Malays.
When you look at one of those old crew lists, you can't help wondering
...
Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels An Unnecessary Woman; I, the Divine; Koolaids; The Hakawati; The Wrong End of the Telescope; and the story collection, The Perv. In 2019, he won the Dos Passos Prize. (more)
If you enjoyed:
Sea of Poppies
Try:
The Hakawati
by Rabih Alameddine
Tahmima Anam is the recipient of a Commonwealth Writers Prize, an O. Henry Prize, and has been named one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and was recently ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Hungry Tide
Try:
A Golden Age
by Tahmima Anam
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