Review:
On very rare occasions, a writer marshals such searing insight and storytelling skill that even a well trodden subject is blown wide open. New connections are made, new futures appear. Ghosh is that kind of writer, and this is that kind of book. --Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything"
For a long time, we have been talking about climate change as a scientific question. In this magnificent book, Ghosh changes the conversation, moving it out of the narrow corridors of science and into the wide precincts of culture, politics, and power. Climate change, he argues, is the result of a set of interrelated histories that promoted and sustained our collective dependence on fossil fuels, and it is a kind of derangement to say we want a different world but act in a way that ensures the continuance of the present one. A clarion call not just to act on climate, but to think about it in a wholly new way. --Naomi Oreskes, author of The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future"
With the deftness of a master storyteller and the powerful vision of a keen political observer, Ghosh traces the complex ways that globalization, empire, and the bourgeois novel are entangled with the history of carbon and our contemporary climate crisis. A thrilling, often brilliant work of synthesis and imagination, The Great Derangement is essential reading for anyone trying to understand what the Anthropocene means for our human future.
--Roy Scranton, author of Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of Civilization"
Ghosh s analysis of the era of climate change is fascinating, erudite, and unflinching. The Great Derangement is a profoundly original book that spares no one. --Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History"
Captivating. . . .The lightness and agility of Ghosh s writing succeeds in keeping all the urgency and the shadows of something we cannot really look at: the destiny of mankind.
--Giorgio Agamben"
Ghosh has written brilliant fiction, impactful essays. But this work on climate change is the most transformational and powerful piece of writing to come from his pen. The Great Derangementis a book on our burning planet for those who are burning it and are being burnt with it. Ghosh gives us, in scalding anguish, a masterpiece that reflects the Buddha 'sAdittapariyaya Suttaor The Fire Sermon that T S Eliot so plangently re-affirmed in TheWaste Land. We have here a book that seeks to chastise, challenge, and change our brain's clogged circuitry.
--Gopalkrishna Gandhi"
For decades Ghosh has been telling us exquisite stories of unlikely human connection across geographical and historical boundaries. In The Great Derangement he goes a step further and sets us amidst the great collectivity of a living and dying planet. This intensely lyrical work from a visionary writer at his best calls for a restitution of the sacred in its most inclusive form so that we can face the climate crisis of our times with our finest remaining resources.
--Leela Gandhi, Brown University"
"For a long time, we have been talking about climate change as a scientific question. In this magnificent book, Ghosh changes the conversation, moving it out of the narrow corridors of science and into the wide precincts of culture, politics, and power. Climate change, he argues, is the result of a set of interrelated histories that promoted and sustained our collective dependence on fossil fuels, and it is a kind of derangement to say we want a different world but act in a way that ensures the continuance of the present one. A clarion call not just to act on climate, but to think about it in a wholly new way."--Naomi Oreskes, author of The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future
"With the deftness of a master storyteller and the powerful vision of a keen political observer, Ghosh traces the complex ways that globalization, empire, and the bourgeois novel are entangled with the history of carbon and our contemporary climate crisis. A thrilling, often brilliant work of synthesis and imagination, The Great Derangement is essential reading for anyone trying to understand what the Anthropocene means for our human future."
--Roy Scranton, author of Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of Civilization
"Ghosh's analysis of the 'era of climate change' is fascinating, erudite, and unflinching. The Great Derangement is a profoundly original book that spares no one."--Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
About the Author:
Amitav Ghosh is an award-winning novelist and essayist whose books include The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and the Ibis Trilogy: Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire.
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