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Why India Has Lost Its Way: Writer Amitav Ghosh on the New World Order, Politics and Past Lives

Why India Has Lost Its Way: Writer Amitav Ghosh on the New World Order, Politics and Past Lives

The Mishal Husain Show vor 5 Monaten

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33:36

For more than 30 years, the Indian-born writer Amitav Ghosh has
built a global following with novels that draw on deep historical
research.

But his latest offering, Ghost-Eye, is more esoteric. The plot
moves back and forth between India and the US, using past lives
to explore the ties between the personal and the political.

The plot centers on a psychiatrist treating a 3-year-old who
shocks her family by insisting she remembers a past life in a
fishing community.

In this conversation with Mishal Husain, Ghosh explains why he’s
finding it harder to write nowadays, how the memories of his
childhood came flooding back during the Covid pandemic, why he
sees capitalism as an obstacle to protecting the environment and
thinks India has lost its way diplomatically.

Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend:
www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview

03:37 - “She had a near-death experience”

05:37 - Reincarnated past lives

08:05 - “The world has lost all its wonder”

08:28 - Growing up in Kolkata

10:56 - Kolkata and New York are the “opposite ends of the
telescope”

11:44 - “I really learned to think against the grain”

12:13 - Creating a “bubble of tranquility” to write

12:32 - Writing from “within the crisis”

14:45 - India has lost its way diplomatically

16:25 - Watching Zohran Mamdani grow up

19:12 - India and China

23:11 - Writing a story to be read in 100 years

27:31 - Writing books by hand

Contact The Mishal Husain Show mishalshow@bloomberg.net

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