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At Delhi Launch, Amitav Ghosh Presents 'Ghost-Eye' and Decries Delhi University's Decline

The novel fuses reincarnation with food to probe ecological unease.

Overview

  • At the Ambassador Hotel in Khan Market, Ghosh introduced Ghost-Eye in conversation with writer Keshava Guha and reflected on the city that shaped his early career.
  • He said Delhi University in the 1970s and 1980s was as good as any university in the world and called its present deterioration a tragedy.
  • Ghost-Eye begins with a three-year-old in a vegetarian household who recalls a past life and demands fish, moving the narrative between 1960s Calcutta and present-day Brooklyn.
  • Ghosh framed the book as "in a way, a book about food," linking appetite to how people relate to the earth and pointing to growing public pushback over ecological damage.
  • He said the story "just wrote itself" and outlined an India tour to Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata, with HarperCollins India publishing the novel.