In An Antique Land | Granta

  • Published: 04/08/2011
  • ISBN: 9781847082220
  • Granta Books
  • 400 pages

In An Antique Land

Amitav Ghosh

In an Antique Land is a subversive history in the guise of a traveller’s tale. When the author stumbles across a slave narrative in the margins of an ancient text, his curiosity is piqued. What follows is a ten year search, which brings author and slave together across 800 hundred years of colonial history. Bursting with anecdote and exuberant detail, it offers a magical, intimate biography of the private life of a country, Egypt, from the Crusades to Operation Desert Storm.

Ghosh's book is extraordinary; a travel book that reaches back into the twelth century as it touches on the dilemmas of our own time.

Sunday Times

Ghosh is an engagingly humble and receptive traveller... a refreshing reversal of the usual power relationship between the observing (European) travel writer and his indigenous subjects.

Guardian

A rich and satisfying journey

The Times

The Author

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956 and 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 and Sea of Poppies, amongst others.

More about the author →

Amitav Ghosh on Granta.com

Essays & Memoir | Granta 20

The Imam and the Indian

Amitav Ghosh

‘We were both travelling, he and I: we were travelling in the West. The only difference was that I had actually been there, in person.’

Fiction | Granta 20

Dancing in Cambodia

Amitav Ghosh

‘The only person I ever met who knew both Princess Soumphady and King Sisowath was a dancer named Chea Samy. She was said to be one of the Cambodia’s greatest dancers, a national treasure. She was also Pol Pot’s sister-in-law.’

Essays & Memoir | Granta 20

An Egyptian in Baghdad

Amitav Ghosh

‘It was exactly three weeks since Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, and miraculously, Abu-Ali, the old shopkeeper, was on his feet.’