Weekend Listen: Writer Amitav Ghosh on Why India Has Lost Its Way

About this episode

Amitav Ghosh discusses his latest novel and the challenges he faces as a writer, alongside his views on India's diplomatic struggles and environmental issues.

For more than 30 years, the Indian-born writer Amitav Ghosh has built a global following with novels that draw on deep historical research.  But his latest offering, Ghost-Eye, is more esoteric. The plot moves back and forth between India and the US, using past lives to explore the ties between the personal and the political. The plot centers on a psychiatrist treating a 3-year-old who shocks her family by insisting she remembers a past life in a fishing community. In this conversation with Mishal Husain, Ghosh explains why he’s finding it harder to write nowadays, how the memories of his childhood came flooding back during the Covid pandemic, why he sees capitalism as an obstacle to protecting the environment and thinks India has lost its way diplomatically.  Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend: www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview We have a special Bloomberg subscription offer for podcast listeners at  Bloomberg.com/podcastoffer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

People in this episode

Host: Mishal Husain

Guest: Amitav Ghosh

Topics covered

• India
• capitalism
• environment
• past lives
• diplomacy
• writing

Keywords

• Amitav Ghosh
• Ghost-Eye
• writing challenges
• India
• capitalism
• environment
• past lives
• Mishal Husain

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Bloomberg, iHeartPodcasts

Books & works: Ghost-Eye

Places: India, US

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