(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Amitav Ghosh talks about his famed Ibis trilogy the influence of literature on societies and what writers can do politically in an exclusive conversation with Sadiq Shaban
As one of the world’s sharpest writers of English prose Amitav Ghosh defies labels. He loves to dabble in historical settings merging ordinariness and anthropology on the canvass of time. The author of more than a dozen books of fiction and non-fiction Ghosh has won Prix Médicis étranger one of France’s highest literary awards. His 2008 novel Sea of Poppies the first volume of the famous Ibis trilogy was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
All along the Calcutta-born author has earned a reputation for being both unconventional and unpredictable. Ghosh’s works much like him refuse to be classified. However what is always intact in his books is a deep sense of place and a subtle form whose contours are shaped by long forgotten places and their histories. Over the years Ghosh’s fiction has successfully unlocked a powerful dialogue with other places peoples and times.
With a poet’s eloquence and a storyteller’s mastery Ghosh depicts the lives of day-to-day characters and their acquaintances in an extravagant and thoughtful detail that leaves one grasping for more. It is perhaps this wizardry that makes him a champion of the post-modern literature emanating from the subcontinent. Though based in New York Ghosh’s generic inventiveness and substance of narrative is truly global.
Khaleej Times caught up with the affable author. Excerpts from the interview:
Talk to us about the Flood of Fire.
I just finished the book. It is the longest and the most ambitious book I have ever attempted. When I finally got to the end of it the thing that really struck me the most was that I must be crazy to begin a project like this. It has been ten years that I have been working on this one project. It is like I was doing something that was quite contrary to what the rest of the world is doing.
Research plays a huge role in all your major works. How important do you think is fact-finding in a genre like fiction
I hesitate to generalise fiction. For me research is very important. I enjoy the business of looking at the world absorbing it and writing about it. If you were to divide writers into categories like abstractionists and figurative ones I think I am very much in the latter camp. All my work is figurative. I want the world to enter into my work.
Continuing with the Ibis trilogy what was the main inspiration behind it
Right from the beginning I have been interested in exploring the way in which people leave their homes. Although I have written about it in many different forms I wanted to write about the earliest years of Indian diaspora when indentured workers went away from India to settle in various places around the world. That was the impetus.
Look these were the pioneering people who took the journey out of India. One of the great conundrums of the earliest India diaspora is that those who left in great numbers were inland people. Usually coastal maritime people leave but here the case was different. It got me intrigued and as I looked at it more closely I realised that these were the areas in which the British were creating opium cultivation. That became the foundation of the trilogy.
While travelling in Ibis the characters reconstruct their identities. Why does this happen It appears almost in sync with your post-modern writing technique that includes fluid identity migration and plurality.
One of the most remarkable things about travel and displacement is that it creates opportunities for self-invention. Immigration is a part of that. People leave their homes and travel to places reinventing and representing themselves in relation to the world. I’m from that generation which saw it first hand. When I was at Oxford we would often hear that some guy had become the Raja of some place. Migration constantly afforded these opportunities for reinvention.
Moving away from Ibis I wanted to ask you about the influence of literature on societies. What can writers do politically
Every writer is different and so is their association with society. When a writer comes out of a circumstance there are lots of expectations on them a great deal of history and aspiration comes to bear. My friend poet Aga Shahid Ali always used to say that if you come from a difficult place and that is all you have to write about then you are not doing anything worthwhile.
Literature opens up spaces where contradictory things can exist. It allows you to explain the nuances of the circumstances. If a writer’s work is read as political it has the fear of becoming reductive. Politics is about here and now. The political circumstance changes. Literature is so much greater than politics. Why would you want to reduce your writing to one aspect of life when it can aspire for something much bigger
It reminds of poet Rainer Maria Rilke who said ‘I scarcely know how to lead my own life how am I going to tell other people how to lead their lives.’ That is something every writer should remember. I think writers should be the last people to tell people how to live their lives because writers themselves lead very unusual secluded lives unlike others.
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