Paper Details

Name: Girija Menon
Country: India

Year: 2015
Volume: Volume-2, Issue-1 (January-June)
Page Number: 10-13

Over the last three decades, Amitav Ghosh has established himself as a writer of uncommon talent who combines literary flair with a rare seriousness of purpose. Ghosh’s writing spans a variety of genres. From the publication of his first novel The Circle of Reason in 1986 to the Flood of Fire which is to be released shortly, it has been an illustrious and rewarding journey. The Hungry Tide which was published in 2004 won him the Hutch Crossword Book prize in 2006 and the Grinzane Cavour prize in Turin, Italy. Each of his works is unique and personal and his appeal lies in his ability to weave Indo-nostalgic elements into more serious themes.
The Hungry Tide is a whirlwind work of the imagination, epic in scope and ambition. The backdrop of the novel is that immense archipelago of islands, the Sunderbans. These islands have lasted centuries through various periods of history. Here there are no borders to divide fresh water from salt, river from sea, even land from water. They are situated in that area between the plains of Bengal and the mighty ocean. The tides reach more than two hundred miles inland and everyday thousands of acres of mangrove forest disappear only to reemerge hours later. For hundreds of years, only the truly dispossessed and the hopeless dreamers of the world have braved the man-eaters and the crocodiles who rule there to eke out a precarious existence from the unyielding mud.