Amitav Ghosh in Conversation

Amitav, I just wanted to say I'm really looking forward to discussing Ghost Eye, and I thought I might just quickly let everyone know that I'm hoping to touch on some of the themes that are coming up in the book, namely the idea of the non-human, the rights and agencies of the non-human, and also this very specific phrase that comes up in the book, cases of the reincarnation type.

And I know that that's the phrase you prefer rather than actually saying reincarnation, and I do want to get into that a little bit later as well.

and also how you consider the notion of time in storytelling.

And somewhere in the middle, I might also touch on aspects from The Great Derangement, which I believe our audience might love to know more about as well.

But firstly, I want to say I love how the novel opens in a way where I immediately experience the non-human world as a disruptive force.

It's a fantastic scene.

We have a young four-year-old called Varsha.

Her family is strictly vegetarian.

But one day, Varsha suddenly insists on wanting to eat fish, and it upsets the entire household.

And I was really struck by that.

We have the non-human front and center, And I want to say, you've done this before.

You've done this in The Hungry Tide, in Gun Island.

You've made the Sundarbans themselves animated agents in your storytelling.

And I was wondering how conscious you were of this as you were writing it.