Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh (born 11 July 1956) is an Indian writer. He won the 54th Jnanpith award in 2018, India's highest literary honor. Ghosh's ambitious novels use complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal identity, particularly of the people of India and South Asia. He has written historical fiction and also written non-fiction works discussing topics such as colonialism and climate change.

Ghosh studied at The Doon School, Dehradun, and earned a doctorate in social anthropology at the University of Oxford. He worked at the ''Indian Express'' newspaper in New Delhi and several academic institutions. His first novel ''The Circle of Reason'' was published in 1986, which he followed with later fictional works including ''The Shadow Lines'' and ''The Glass Palace.'' Between 2004 and 2015, he worked on the ''Ibis'' trilogy, which revolves around the build-up and implications of the First Opium War. His non-fiction work includes ''In an Antique Land'' and ''The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable''.

Ghosh holds two Lifetime Achievement awards and four honorary doctorates. In 2007 he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India's highest honours, by the President of India. In 2010 he was a joint winner, along with Margaret Atwood of a Dan David prize, and 2011 he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis festival in Montreal. He was the first English-language writer to receive the award. In 2019 ''Foreign Policy'' magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade. Provided by Wikipedia