Book Summary and Reviews of Ghost-Eye by Amitav Ghosh

Ghost-Eye by Amitav Ghosh

Ghost-Eye

A Novel

by Amitav Ghosh

  • Publishes:
  • Jun 16, 2026, 336 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Past and present collide in a novel about a girl who might just be a "case of the reincarnation type."

Varsha Gupta wants fish for lunch. Her family is shocked; the three-year-old has never tasted fish in her life. The Guptas are strict vegetarians and don't allow it inside their Calcutta mansion. But Varsha claims she can remember another life, in a mud house by a river where she caught and cooked fish with a different mother.

Perplexed, the Guptas turn to Dr. Shoma Bose, a psychologist who has been investigating what are known as "cases of the reincarnation type" for years. But her understanding of the world is changed forever by Varsha's revelations.

Half a century later, Varsha's case file catches the attention of a group of environmental activists, and Shoma's nephew Dinu is drawn inexorably into their plans. As Dinu finds himself caught up in the search for Varsha, buried memories of his own past begin to surface.

Traveling between late 1960s Calcutta and present-day Brooklyn, Amitav Ghosh's Ghost-Eye is an urgent and expansive novel from one of our greatest living storytellers, about family, fate, and our fragile planet.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Though the novel's tonal shifts, from arch to optimistic to somber, can feel a bit haphazard, Ghosh adeptly toggles between the central mysteries in both timelines, and he ushers them to surprising conclusions. It's an impressive feat." —Publishers Weekly

"Ghosh's fluent novel is rich in its detailed knowledge...Ghosh's vision of environmental action taken by ordinary people against corporations is inspiring...Irresistibly readable." —Kirkus Reviews

"A thoroughly gratifying return to the full-form novel...Always an exceptional storyteller, [Ghosh] brilliantly combines what can be touched and seen with the documented otherworldly...Ghosh gifts a magnificent story ready to be believed, appreciated, and celebrated." —Shelf Awareness

"Ghost-Eye is a marvel that will ignite a reader's sense of wonder—a masterful novel, at once simple and capacious. Ghosh is one of our finest writers." —Rabih Alameddine, National Book Award–winning author of The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)

This information about Ghost-Eye was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Amitav Ghosh Author Biography

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and the first two volumes of The Ibis Trilogy: Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke.

The Circle of Reason was awarded France's Prix Médicis in 1990, and The Shadow Lines won two prestigious Indian prizes the same year, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar. The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke award for 1997, and The Glass Palace won the International e-Book Award at the Frankfurt book fair in 2001. In January 2005 The Hungry Tide was awarded the Crossword Book Prize, a major ...

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