photo copyright NEW YORK TIMES
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A female friend of this blog, an Indian national in Boston and by origin a Bengali woman herself and big fan of Dr Ghosh's novels, all of them, including the nonfiction essay book "TERMS OF DERANGEMENT" (2016), tells this blogger by way of clarification and amplification: "I finished reading it. I really liked it. This novel is a definite cli-fi novel the way you and I define it, that climate change is at the heart of the tale. The novel would make no sense if Ghosh were not to talk about ''the little ice age'' in Europe and the current disasters. The story is well-told although there are some anachronisms and obvious errors. In the 17th century Bengal, people would use Persian terms as that was the lingua franca in India, not Arabic terms. Also, for local female 'deities', the correct Bengali term is ''thhan'' not ''dham''. But as most white Western readers and reviewers are not familiar with Bengal and such nuances, they will miss these points. No big deal, minor points. It's a wonderful novel and sure to lead to Dr Ghosh getting the NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE someday in the next 20 years.''
Dinanath Datta ('Dino' is his nickname) is a Brooklyn-based antiquarian and book dealer and has a PhD in Bengali folklore from a midwestern American university. Among his friends are an Italian historian ('Cinta', ironically this name is also translated as 'thought' in Bengali), and Piya, a marine biologist. On a trip to Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta), Datta learns from a distant relative about a shrine in the Sunderbans dedicated to the Bandooki sadagar (literally translated as 'gun merchant') and decides to visit the shrine in the Sunderbans. There he meets with Tipu, who is a protege of Piya but he is a strange, misfit young man in modern day India; and Rafi, the son of the present caretaker of the shrine. He also visits the shrine in the Sunderbans (we later learn that the shrine was washed away) and notes several murals in the wall. He learns in bits and pieces about the tale of the bandooki sadagar: that he had a fate similar to Chand Sadagar of the Manasamangal tale, that he was haunted by the snake goddess Manasa, and he travelled from Bengal on his ship to ferry merchandise in search for fortune to escape a scorching drought in seventeenth century Bengal. On the way, he was captured by Portuguese pirates and was sold. He was bought and freed by someone who took him to gun island which was an island within an island via the land of palm candy ('tal misri'r desh) and island of chains (shikol dwip). He eventually met with adventures in that gun island and was able to return home thanks to divine interventions by Manasa the snake goddess under the promise that he would build a shrine to the goddess. However the tale was passed orally from generation to generation and was not saved on printed form. While on the island, Dino met a hooded cobra face to face and when Tipu tried to snare the cobra with a fishing net, the cobra bit him; Tipu was somehow saved but he was in a state of delirium and kept saying oracles: one such oracle was about 'Rani' and was meant for Piya. Dino learned from Piya that Rani was a dolphin and the dolphin pods were beached. Piya thought that dead zone in the ocean brought about by oil refineries and byproducts was the reason of dolphin and whale beachings. This was the connection between the tale/folklore, Dino's journey, and the climate change as a theme in the book.
Dino returns to the USA and meets with Cinta at a conference in L.A. that was eventually ruined because of a major wildfire near L.A. that threatened the conference site. Dino discussed his trip to Sunderbans with Cinta and the temple: Cinta told Dino that the Arabs named the city of Venice as Bundooki island after guns/hazelnuts/bullets from that 'island within an island' as Venice has always been, and invited Dino to visit her in Venice. On that trip in LA, a dog of one of Cinta's nieces died on the beach bitten by sea snakes that were unusual in the Pacific but seemed to have arrived here due to warming of the Pacific ocean.
Anyway, Dino ends up in Venice on a mission to work as a translator but soon encounters migrants from Bangladesh and here he miraculously finds Rafi, as a migrant construction worker in Venice. A series of encounters follow and here we learn the plight and struggles of migrant workers from Bangladesh, and parts of Africa. Through his conversations with Cinta, Dino learns that the tal misri's desh (''the palm candy land'') would be Egypt - a common country back in the 17th century when they brought slaves to Europe and later in the story we learn that shikol dwip (the island of chains) could be Sicily. In a dramatic turn of events, Rafi narrates how he and Tipu escaped India through Bangladesh and trapped by touts and middlemen, he ended up in Venice but Tipu was probably somewhere in Egypt. Meanwhile, a ship with migrants were heading towards Italy and Dino, Piya, Cinta, and a benefactor of the Bangladeshi migrants went aboard on a boat to see that the migrants on the ship got rescued and find asylum in Italy. The story ends in a dual note of tragedy and union. While the migrants in the ship that had Tipu in it were rescued and were repatriated in Italy, Cinta dies on the ship and before her death, she revealed a hallucination about seeing her deceased daughter to Dino.
The plot is complex and is a quadrangle of Bengali folklore (Manasamangal kabya), climate change (beaching of dolphins and whales, oxygen-depleted dead zones of oceans wreaking havoc with marine lives, storm surges, description of cyclones, and wildfires), connecting with medieval European history (tales of printing) and Amitav Ghosh takes you through a historic walk of the precincts of Venice, and relates to European expeditions in the little ice age in the seventeenth century), and international migration (this is a favorite theme of Amitav Ghosh and reminded me of his Ibis trilogy). I'd say GUN ISLAND is also his best work to date.
To appreciate the book, some idea about Bengali folktales and local deities is helpful. The tale of manasamangal is moot to this near epic, where the protagonist is hounded out and then returns a hero from overseas with riches. There is also tale of travails of this protagonist reflected also in the life of Dino: his initial exodus, frequent homecomings, his travel to the shrine, and his travels to Venice and finding a partner in Piya. Climate features prominently throughout the tale: several allusions to the shrine and how it was devastated with the hurricane Aila and then later on, how the shrine was washed away in a subsequent storm surge, the several allusions to whale and dolphin beaching, and fire and cyclones as climate change events added twists and plot changes throughout the novel. The international migration and migrant stories form the centrepiece of Dino's experiences in Venice and his meetings with the Bangladeshi migrants add the depth to the tale.
Overall, the novel is a great piece of work bringing together the clear and present dangers of lived realities of the 21st century. In places, the story seemed to be too obvious and contrived with coincidences. The allusion to Arabic expressions in seventeenth century Bengal seems contrived as the lingua franca back then was Persian as opposed to Arabic. There is a touch of ''The Da Vinci Code'' novel and movie by Dan Brown but this is nowhere close, as the tales were not meant to be riddles at all, but life as told in the times: if there were interpretations, they were interpretations from a historian and Dino, a Bengali trying to decipher them in their own way: there is no equivalent of Venice in Bengali, contemporary or otherwise that labels Venice as Bandook dwip. Besides, for local deities, the shrine is referred to as 'thhan' not 'dham' (dhams are usually for male deities and a more North Indian concept rather than a rustic South Bengal setting).
But overall, GUN ISLAND is a great tale and I highly recommend it.
2 PHOTO CAPTIONS: Dr. Amitav Ghosh relaxes in his home in Brooklyn. His new novel, a cli-fi novel titled “Gun Island,” is about an Indian-American rare book dealer drawn into a globe-spanning adventure with Bangladeshi migrants in Libya, dolphins in the Mediterranean and venomous water snakes in California.
Hong Kong born and raised Times reporter Alisha Haridasani Gupta reports in an article for ''The Morning Briefing'' that appeared in the print edition of the newspaper on September 9. A NYT editor told this blog: "Alisha's article about Dr. Ghosh was at first on Sept. 7 digital only. It was placed in the print edition on September 9."
Sept 7, 2019 digital only and Sept 9 print edition with print edition headline below: photo from actual newspaper that day.
Alisha wrote (slightly edited by this blogger for clarification and amplification:
How do you capture the realities of climate change in a ''cli-fi'' novel — not just its causes and symptoms, but the ever-changing ways it is manifesting itself?
Answering that question is a challenge, according to Brooklyn novelist Amitav Ghosh, 63, the father of two bi-racial adult children in Manhattan he raised with his American nonfiction writer wife Deborah Baker.
“I feel completely convinced that we have to change our fictional practices in order to deal with the world that we’re in,” he said.
“Something this big and this important, there have to be an infinite number of ways to just talk about it,” he said, similar to how war, slavery, colonization, famine and other crises and events have seeped into so many forms of literature.
Ghosh, born and raised in India, and with a Phd earned in Britain, is attempting to add something to the global climate conversation with “Gun Island,” his 12th novel. The story he tells leaps from the United States, to the Sundarbans mangrove forest between India and Bangladesh, to Italy, places where rising temperatures and water levels have uprooted human and animal lives and upended political systems. [please scroll down to read the rest of this blog post]
How do you capture the realities of climate change in a ''cli-fi'' novel — not just its causes and symptoms, but the ever-changing ways it is manifesting itself?
Answering that question is a challenge, according to Brooklyn novelist Amitav Ghosh, 63, the father of two bi-racial adult children in Manhattan he raised with his American nonfiction writer wife Deborah Baker.
“I feel completely convinced that we have to change our fictional practices in order to deal with the world that we’re in,” he said.
“Something this big and this important, there have to be an infinite number of ways to just talk about it,” he said, similar to how war, slavery, colonization, famine and other crises and events have seeped into so many forms of literature.
Ghosh, born and raised in India, and with a Phd earned in Britain, is attempting to add something to the global climate conversation with “Gun Island,” his 12th novel. The story he tells leaps from the United States, to the Sundarbans mangrove forest between India and Bangladesh, to Italy, places where rising temperatures and water levels have uprooted human and animal lives and upended political systems. [please scroll down to read the rest of this blog post]
Ghosh told Boston writer Wen Stephenson in a recent interview that he came up with the idea for “Gun Island” not in 2000 as some critics have incorrectly reported, but after he published a non-fiction essay book titled "The Great Derangement" in 2016.
“Gun Island” is likely to resonate in Italy, said Anna Nadotti, the Italian translator of his novels and essays for some 30 years now, as Italy grapples with an influx of migrants fleeing war, persecution and climate crises.
“Politically, socially and also culturally, it’s important to give people all the means to understand what is really happening, why all these people are coming,” she said.
“Even if sometimes in ‘Gun Island’ Amitav invents things in his storytelling scenario, nothing is fictional,” she added, pointing out a scene from the book that is familiar to many Italians: a boat full of migrants, stranded at sea because it has been denied permission to dock.
At one point in “Gun Island,” Deen arrives in Los Angeles for an antiquarian book dealers conference at a museum. Wildfires burn nearby. The conference, at first, goes on. But soon, the bibliophiles, librarians and book dealers are told to evacuate because the winds are changing direction, making the blaze’s path increasingly unpredictable.
It mirrors when fires came perilously close to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2017, raising concerns they would destroy the artifacts inside.
Later in the story, Deen confronts a freakish hailstorm and fierce “gusts of winds” in Venice. Two months ago, the real-life city was battered by hailstones and strong winds.
That a cli-fi novel in 2019 seems to anticipate some of these unusual weather events is proof to Ghosh that literature should devote more attention to the climate issues.
“Fact,” he said, “is outrunning fiction.”
REVIEW FROM ＡＭＡＺＯＮ
You can always guarantee a good solid story when you pick up a book by Amitav Ghosh and this is no exception. It’s a magical tale, one made up from legends, fantasy and full of magical realism too. Locations switch from India, Venice and Los Angeles on a trail for something elusive and rare..
However, where this book is clever is the way it also manages to highlight serious issues such as climate change and immigration in such a lyrical way, you really sit up and take notice. The book starts slow and the pace throughout stays much the same. The story jumps from one place and time to another, there’s flashbacks and historical snippets throughout. By the end the picture builds to reveal a full and colourful narrative.
Overall, it read like a journey of discovery, a colonial adventure and in many ways it was. Deen is an outsider in both countries he visits. Living in New York, he travels to India and Venice and finds himself in places his Bengali heritage is called into question even amongst the Bengali communities there.
Indian magic
The Indian set parts were the most fascinating and the story didn't captivate me in the same way when he got to Venice. It got a bit more serious and the story of legends didn’t feel as strong or connected here. However, when he went to the Sundarbans, I was transfixed. This was a place of local legends. He meets many people along the way who will all have some impact or relevance on his own life.
This was a novel of two sides, of two halves. One a novel about travel, migration and wanting to belong, and the other, a tale of heritage, history and looking within yourself. Merged together, it’s quite a story.
And that elusive Gun Island will fascinate me for a long time to come.
“Gun Island” is likely to resonate in Italy, said Anna Nadotti, the Italian translator of his novels and essays for some 30 years now, as Italy grapples with an influx of migrants fleeing war, persecution and climate crises.
“Politically, socially and also culturally, it’s important to give people all the means to understand what is really happening, why all these people are coming,” she said.
“Even if sometimes in ‘Gun Island’ Amitav invents things in his storytelling scenario, nothing is fictional,” she added, pointing out a scene from the book that is familiar to many Italians: a boat full of migrants, stranded at sea because it has been denied permission to dock.
At one point in “Gun Island,” Deen arrives in Los Angeles for an antiquarian book dealers conference at a museum. Wildfires burn nearby. The conference, at first, goes on. But soon, the bibliophiles, librarians and book dealers are told to evacuate because the winds are changing direction, making the blaze’s path increasingly unpredictable.
It mirrors when fires came perilously close to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2017, raising concerns they would destroy the artifacts inside.
Later in the story, Deen confronts a freakish hailstorm and fierce “gusts of winds” in Venice. Two months ago, the real-life city was battered by hailstones and strong winds.
That a cli-fi novel in 2019 seems to anticipate some of these unusual weather events is proof to Ghosh that literature should devote more attention to the climate issues.
“Fact,” he said, “is outrunning fiction.”
Author Amitav Ghosh at his home in Brooklyn, Aug 22, 2019. ()The New York Times
You can always guarantee a good solid story when you pick up a book by Amitav Ghosh and this is no exception. It’s a magical tale, one made up from legends, fantasy and full of magical realism too. Locations switch from India, Venice and Los Angeles on a trail for something elusive and rare..
However, where this book is clever is the way it also manages to highlight serious issues such as climate change and immigration in such a lyrical way, you really sit up and take notice. The book starts slow and the pace throughout stays much the same. The story jumps from one place and time to another, there’s flashbacks and historical snippets throughout. By the end the picture builds to reveal a full and colourful narrative.
Overall, it read like a journey of discovery, a colonial adventure and in many ways it was. Deen is an outsider in both countries he visits. Living in New York, he travels to India and Venice and finds himself in places his Bengali heritage is called into question even amongst the Bengali communities there.
Indian magic
The Indian set parts were the most fascinating and the story didn't captivate me in the same way when he got to Venice. It got a bit more serious and the story of legends didn’t feel as strong or connected here. However, when he went to the Sundarbans, I was transfixed. This was a place of local legends. He meets many people along the way who will all have some impact or relevance on his own life.
This was a novel of two sides, of two halves. One a novel about travel, migration and wanting to belong, and the other, a tale of heritage, history and looking within yourself. Merged together, it’s quite a story.
And that elusive Gun Island will fascinate me for a long time to come.
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