Magical realism meets 1960s India in a novel about a girl with mysterious powers—who might be able to access memories of a past life. The Gupta household is in a state of three-year-old Varsha, beloved daughter of strictly vegetarian Hindu parents, has just demanded to be served fish. Moreover, she possesses an inexplicable knowledge of different species and preparations—knowledge that almost seems to have come from a past life. Perplexed, the Guptas turn to Dr. Shoma Bose, a psychiatrist who lives with her husband, Monty, and nephew Dinu in Calcutta. Little do they know that Shoma has been investigating what she calls “cases of the reincarnation type” for years—and in Varsha, she may have found her next patient. Such cases, she believes, are much more common than people realize, and she sets out to prove that Varsha led a past life that her wealthy family can barely fathom—and that she might possess special powers, too. Meanwhile, Dinu grows up oblivious to the research Shoma has been conducting in secret. Years later, while sorting through his late aunt’s possessions, he uncovers Varsha’s case file—and so begins a quest to track her down. If Varsha really is a “ghost-eye,” then her unique abilities could be what’s needed to thwart plans for a new coal plant that will destroy one of India’s last pristine wildernesses. Moving from 1970s Calcutta to our ecologically threatened present, Amitav Ghosh’s Ghost-Eye is a captivating work of magical realism for our time.
Author
Amitav Ghosh is one of India's best-known writers. His books include The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, Incendiary Circumstances, The Hungry Tide. His most recent novel, Sea of Poppies, is the first volume of the Ibis Trilogy. Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He studied in Dehra Dun, New Delhi, Alexandria and Oxford and his first job was at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi. He earned a doctorate at Oxford before he wrote his first novel, which was published in 1986. The Circle of Reason won the Prix Medicis Etranger, one of France's top literary awards, and The Shadow Lines won 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 Grand Prize for Fiction at the Frankfurt International e-Book Awards in 2001. The Hungry Tide won the Hutch Crossword Book Prize in 2006. In 2007 Amitav Ghosh was awarded the Grinzane Cavour Prize in Turin, Italy. Amitav Ghosh has written for many publications, including the Hindu, The New Yorker and Granta, and he has served on the juries of several international film festivals, including Locarno and Venice. He has taught at many universities in India and the USA, including Delhi University, Columbia, the City University of New York and Harvard. He no longer teaches and is currently writing the next volume of the Ibis Trilogy. He is married to the writer, Deborah Baker, and has two children, Lila and Nayan. He divides his time between Kolkata, Goa and Brooklyn.
