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Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times
"An uncannily honest writer." — New York Times Book Review
The novelist and journalist Amitav Ghosh has offered extraordinary firsthand accounts of pivotal world events over the past twenty years. He is an essential voice in forums like The Nation , the New York Times , the New Republic , Granta , and The New Yorker. Incendiary Circumstances brings together the finest of these pieces for the first time—including many never before published in the States—in a compelling chronicle of the turmoil of our times. Incendiary Circumstances begins with Ghosh’s arrival in the Andaman and Nicobar islands just days after the devastation of the 2005 tsunami. We then travel back to September 11, 2001, as Ghosh retrieves his young daughter from school, sick with the knowledge that she must witness the kind of firestorm that has been in the background of his everyday life since childhood. With a prescience born of experience, Ghosh warned decades ago of the dangerous rise of religious extremism. In his travels he has stood on an icy mountaintop on the contested border between India and Pakistan, interviewed Pol Pot’s sister-in-law in Cambodia, shared the elation of Egyptians when Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize, and stood with his threatened Sikh neighbors through the riots following Indira Gandhi's assassination. With intelligence and authentic sympathy, he "illuminates the human drama behind the headlines" ( Publishers Weekly ). Incendiary Circumstances is unparalleled testimony of an era defined by the ravages of politics and nature.
Amitav Ghosh is acclaimed for his political journalism and his travel writing. The New York Times Book Review called his travelogue, In An Antique Land , "remarkable . . . rivals anything by the masters of social realism in modern Egyptian literature." He is also the best-selling author of four novels, including The Hungry Tide and The Glass Palace , which has been published in eighteen foreign editions. Ghosh has won France's prestigious Prix Medici Etranger, India's Sahitya Akademi Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Educated in South Asia, the Middle East, and the United Kingdom, Ghosh holds a doctorate in social anthropology from Oxford. He divides his time between Harvard University, where he is a visiting professor, and his homes in Kolkata, India, and Brooklyn, New York.
Praise for Incendiary Circumstances
"This absorbing collection of essays by the novelist, journalist, and travel writer Ghosh . . . covers some two decades of catastrophe and upheaval, from sectarian violence in his native India during the 1980s through the September 11 attacks . . . to the recent Indian Ocean tsunami. With an eye for evocative detail, he illuminates the human dramas behind the the plight of tsunami refugees trying to rebuild their lives and finances after every bank record and piece of ID is lost to the waves; the courage of ordinary Indians protecting their Sikh neighbors from rampaging Hindu mobs . . . He is equally engaging when he turns from current affairs to literary essays on, say, the international culture of novel reading or the Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali. Written in luminous prose with unusual understanding . . . an insightful look at a chaotic world."— Publishers Weekly Starred Review
Praise for Amitav Ghosh
"Ghosh is adept at delineating the complicated crosscurrents of emerging national independence movements. He is even more impressive at portraying the different ways in which individuals react to the turmoil, hardship, and disorientation wrought by war.”— Wall Street Journal
"A wonderful hybrid of travel writing, reporting, historical analysis, and memoir – in other words, the kind of piece [Ghosh] writes better than almost anyone else.”— Washington Times
The novelist and journalist Amitav Ghosh has offered extraordinary firsthand accounts of pivotal world events over the past twenty years. He is an essential voice in forums like The Nation , the New York Times , the New Republic , Granta , and The New Yorker. Incendiary Circumstances brings together the finest of these pieces for the first time—including many never before published in the States—in a compelling chronicle of the turmoil of our times. Incendiary Circumstances begins with Ghosh’s arrival in the Andaman and Nicobar islands just days after the devastation of the 2005 tsunami. We then travel back to September 11, 2001, as Ghosh retrieves his young daughter from school, sick with the knowledge that she must witness the kind of firestorm that has been in the background of his everyday life since childhood. With a prescience born of experience, Ghosh warned decades ago of the dangerous rise of religious extremism. In his travels he has stood on an icy mountaintop on the contested border between India and Pakistan, interviewed Pol Pot’s sister-in-law in Cambodia, shared the elation of Egyptians when Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize, and stood with his threatened Sikh neighbors through the riots following Indira Gandhi's assassination. With intelligence and authentic sympathy, he "illuminates the human drama behind the headlines" ( Publishers Weekly ). Incendiary Circumstances is unparalleled testimony of an era defined by the ravages of politics and nature.
Amitav Ghosh is acclaimed for his political journalism and his travel writing. The New York Times Book Review called his travelogue, In An Antique Land , "remarkable . . . rivals anything by the masters of social realism in modern Egyptian literature." He is also the best-selling author of four novels, including The Hungry Tide and The Glass Palace , which has been published in eighteen foreign editions. Ghosh has won France's prestigious Prix Medici Etranger, India's Sahitya Akademi Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Educated in South Asia, the Middle East, and the United Kingdom, Ghosh holds a doctorate in social anthropology from Oxford. He divides his time between Harvard University, where he is a visiting professor, and his homes in Kolkata, India, and Brooklyn, New York.
Praise for Incendiary Circumstances
"This absorbing collection of essays by the novelist, journalist, and travel writer Ghosh . . . covers some two decades of catastrophe and upheaval, from sectarian violence in his native India during the 1980s through the September 11 attacks . . . to the recent Indian Ocean tsunami. With an eye for evocative detail, he illuminates the human dramas behind the the plight of tsunami refugees trying to rebuild their lives and finances after every bank record and piece of ID is lost to the waves; the courage of ordinary Indians protecting their Sikh neighbors from rampaging Hindu mobs . . . He is equally engaging when he turns from current affairs to literary essays on, say, the international culture of novel reading or the Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali. Written in luminous prose with unusual understanding . . . an insightful look at a chaotic world."— Publishers Weekly Starred Review
Praise for Amitav Ghosh
"Ghosh is adept at delineating the complicated crosscurrents of emerging national independence movements. He is even more impressive at portraying the different ways in which individuals react to the turmoil, hardship, and disorientation wrought by war.”— Wall Street Journal
"A wonderful hybrid of travel writing, reporting, historical analysis, and memoir – in other words, the kind of piece [Ghosh] writes better than almost anyone else.”— Washington Times
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
63 people are currently reading
512 people want to read
About the author
Amitav Ghosh
55 books4,174 followersAmitav Ghosh is an Indian writer. He won the 54th Jnanpith award in 2018, India's highest literary honour. Ghosh's ambitious novels use complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal identity, particularly of the people of India and South Asia. He has written historical fiction and non-fiction works discussing topics such as colonialism and climate change.
Ghosh studied at The Doon School, Dehradun, and earned a doctorate in social anthropology at the University of Oxford. He worked at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi and several academic institutions. His first novel, The Circle of Reason, was published in 1986, which he followed with later fictional works, including The Shadow Lines and The Glass Palace. Between 2004 and 2015, he worked on the Ibis trilogy, which revolves around the build-up and implications of the First Opium War. His non-fiction work includes In an Antique Land (1992) and The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016).
Ghosh holds two Lifetime Achievement awards and four honorary doctorates. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India's highest honours, by the President of India. In 2010, he was a joint winner, along with Margaret Atwood, of a Dan David prize, and in 2011, he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis festival in Montreal. He was the first English-language writer to receive the award. In 2019, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade.
Ghosh studied at The Doon School, Dehradun, and earned a doctorate in social anthropology at the University of Oxford. He worked at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi and several academic institutions. His first novel, The Circle of Reason, was published in 1986, which he followed with later fictional works, including The Shadow Lines and The Glass Palace. Between 2004 and 2015, he worked on the Ibis trilogy, which revolves around the build-up and implications of the First Opium War. His non-fiction work includes In an Antique Land (1992) and The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016).
Ghosh holds two Lifetime Achievement awards and four honorary doctorates. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India's highest honours, by the President of India. In 2010, he was a joint winner, along with Margaret Atwood, of a Dan David prize, and in 2011, he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis festival in Montreal. He was the first English-language writer to receive the award. In 2019, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 24, 2011
Fantastic. This is the first book by Ghosh I have ever picked up, and rather than his normal fiction-fare, this is a collection of non-fiction essays. Most were particularly appealing to me as they combine ethnography, travel writing, and academic reflection on topics ranging from the history of the novel, imperialism, collective violence, and ideology--all located in various locales; Egypt, Cambodia, India, Burma, New York. I couldn't put this book down. There's only one clunker of an essay in my opinion (the one where Ghosh admits he wrote it because he promised a friend that he would), but otherwise it was riveting from start to finish. I will definitely read some of Ghosh's fiction after this.
October 21, 2007
I don't think there's an author I've admired more in the last few years then Ghosh, and this book more then bolsters my admiration. This collections of essays more or less spans the globe, and I think he has something vital to say from both an ethnographic perspective as well as a public intellectual, who is committed to humanity. I particularly like how this book takes history as a starting point for conversations about current conflicts, but doesn't preserve it or pretend that history is static and singularly enacted. I also have to say the writer who can move from fiction to essays so seamlessly is envy-worthy.
July 8, 2020
Very good writer. Because of the nature of it, selections of essays written over a period of time, it didn't seem entirely unified to me. Also, a real downer in these times.
July 17, 2019
I would give this book of essays 5 stars b/c the writing is exquisite and narratively deep and the subjects of his writing are compelling and unique regardless of your interests. However, the collection as a whole suffers a bit from that, let's put together a collection of your best published writing and frame it in a way that makes sense. I get the Incendiary Circumstances aspect to a certain degree. Ghosh writes about places most Americans couldn't find on a map such as Burma/Myanmar, for example, and conflicts that are beyond our borders and thus unless you are a member of a diaspora or a scholar, you're just not that interested such as partisan conflicts within India that are rarely if ever reported on by American journalists. I learned quite a bit about worlds that I know little about.
However, I got this book from the library to read an essay about Shahid Agha Ali, a poet and teacher whom I knew from taking a class with him as an undergraduate and remained in contact with intermittently before his premature death in 2001 at the age of 50. Ghosh's essay on Shahid does not disappoint. He not only provides a precise analysis of his work with forms such as the ghazal, specific to Arab poetry, but he brought to life the incredibly charming, delightful, and compassional man I remember as a teacher and as an acquaintance. For that essay alone, the book is worth buying or borrowing in my case. But that essay and maybe one or two more do not seem to be "incendiary" even though where Shahid grew up as well as his poetry point to a conflicted political history, a diasporic subject, and unending violence that divides India today.
I read the other essays because already familiar with his work, both non-fiction and fiction, I knew that it would be intelligently and persuasively written because Ghosh must be one of the best story-tellers alive today. His anthropological background gives him the keenest of eyes and ears. Nothing he writes has ever made me think, hmmm... he is not quite getting this right or he is writing about another culture in an essentialising or condescending way. In fact, it is his position as a South Asian from a culture that itself has been not only ridden by violence, internecine politics, Orientalized/considered Third World that I think grants him both permission and authority to write about relatively unknown cultures, places, conflicts, and people. Included are a few essays about the US (a short essay toward the end of the book on 4 Corners takes on a somewhat amusing, glancing take on mythology of the American West through silencing the mass genocide that occurred in this space).
His empathy and consideration of the power of representation remains always at the forefront as does his ability to place himself often at the edges of his essays as an observer and distiller of experience yet still be part of the narrative, often in a self-deprecating or humorous manner. One can see how Ghosh is such a proficient writer in both fiction and non-fiction as he brings the best of each of these genres in contact with each other.
However, I got this book from the library to read an essay about Shahid Agha Ali, a poet and teacher whom I knew from taking a class with him as an undergraduate and remained in contact with intermittently before his premature death in 2001 at the age of 50. Ghosh's essay on Shahid does not disappoint. He not only provides a precise analysis of his work with forms such as the ghazal, specific to Arab poetry, but he brought to life the incredibly charming, delightful, and compassional man I remember as a teacher and as an acquaintance. For that essay alone, the book is worth buying or borrowing in my case. But that essay and maybe one or two more do not seem to be "incendiary" even though where Shahid grew up as well as his poetry point to a conflicted political history, a diasporic subject, and unending violence that divides India today.
I read the other essays because already familiar with his work, both non-fiction and fiction, I knew that it would be intelligently and persuasively written because Ghosh must be one of the best story-tellers alive today. His anthropological background gives him the keenest of eyes and ears. Nothing he writes has ever made me think, hmmm... he is not quite getting this right or he is writing about another culture in an essentialising or condescending way. In fact, it is his position as a South Asian from a culture that itself has been not only ridden by violence, internecine politics, Orientalized/considered Third World that I think grants him both permission and authority to write about relatively unknown cultures, places, conflicts, and people. Included are a few essays about the US (a short essay toward the end of the book on 4 Corners takes on a somewhat amusing, glancing take on mythology of the American West through silencing the mass genocide that occurred in this space).
His empathy and consideration of the power of representation remains always at the forefront as does his ability to place himself often at the edges of his essays as an observer and distiller of experience yet still be part of the narrative, often in a self-deprecating or humorous manner. One can see how Ghosh is such a proficient writer in both fiction and non-fiction as he brings the best of each of these genres in contact with each other.
October 30, 2015
Amitav Ghosh is best known (at least to me) as a writer of novels, but he also has, apparently, a fairly distinguished career as a journalist, and “Incendiary Circumstances” collects a number of the best examples of his non-fictional writing. As one might expect, they largely (though not entirely) focus on South Asia. The collection leads off with a heart-wrenching story about the effect of the 2005 tsunami on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an Indian possession which was absolutely devastated by that natural disaster, and Ghosh also has a story about the anti-Sikh riots following the assassination of Indira Ghandi: he was actually living in New Delhi at the time. Plus, 9/11, which Ghosh, now a New York resident, was also present for. But it’s not all doom and gloom: long pieces about Burma — Ghosh interviews both Aung San Suu Kyi and student protestors from 1988 who are now (as of the time when the piece was written, that is) guerrillas in the jungle — and Cambodia — here, Ghosh interweaves classical Cambodian dance and recent (as of the early ’90s) Cambodian history — have a more hopeful air to them. Naturally, as a novelist Ghosh spends some time writing about writing (though I found these pieces to be often the least interesting and persuasive). And several of the essays, dealing with the time Ghosh spent in a small village in Upper Egypt and the resulting intra-third-world culture clash, are even somewhat humorous. Ghosh’s writing style is also quite different from that of his novels, which have a tendency towards the baroque: here, the language is suitably journalistic, simple and straightforward, but no less impactful for that. Always interesting and occasionally quite insightful, “Incendiary Circumstances” is well worth reading.
April 16, 2008
The book's a collection of essays written over a nearly 20-year span (mid 80's to 2005). Some are just a few pages long, some are about 30 pages or more. The topics are diverse - a visit to a Tsunami-stricken island, a visit to Burma, Cambodia, the riots in New Delhi after the assassination of Indira Ghandi, reaction to the death of a neighbor in the Sept 11 attacks... I really like Ghosh when he's doing non-fiction. He has a nice way of making observations. But there's nothing too earth shattering in what he says. But still, I enjoyed this collection of essays.
July 17, 2012
I picked this up on a whim, and further grabbed it off the stack on a whim, and couldn't put it down. Ghosh manages to wrap his travels to remote centers of the Middle East and Asia into discussions on Indian literature and sprinkle it with big picture thoughts on globalization and foreign affairs to make a compelling read.
Loved it. Wish it didn't end.
Loved it. Wish it didn't end.
July 31, 2014
I'm really enjoying these types of nonfiction works where authors combine ten or twenty years of experiences with some updated reflections. Ghosh adds some international literature to his equation and invites the reader to dig deeper into non-Western voices, which I think is crucial for finding some global empathy, especially in these incendiary times.
March 30, 2011
Excellent book. Love how the author connected different events all over the world with each other by teasing out the common motivations and/or circumstances that bring them about and the universal nature of the human experience around them.
March 25, 2011
In spite of the horriffic and disheartening events that he writes about, like a true humanist, Ghosh has a way of not keeping it all about very personal human stories. A must read if only for the essays on Cambodia and Burma.
October 15, 2008
Illuminating, thoughtful analysis and history of current political, economic, social, and literary affairs through the lens of a well-travelled and well-informed essayist
December 21, 2009
Essays by one of my favorite authors with a cross-cultural perspective. The 5 star essays in my opinion: The town by the sea (tsunami, Imperial temptations, and Sept 11.
June 1, 2010
These are well-written chronicles of people, places and situations told from a uniquely humane perspective.
April 19, 2012
My first encounter with Mr. Ghosh and it was well spend and enjoyable. Burma is sad, Andaman was intriguing and Egypt was hilarious. Easy to read however the words are weighted.
November 12, 2012
Very enlightening, glad I read it.
December 13, 2012
SOME OF THE BEST R EPORTAGE EVER, JUST WISH THERE WAS MORE.
October 30, 2022
finished 30th october 2022 good read three stars i liked it kindle library loaner first from ghosh...with a lack of anything available at the digital library i happened on this and since reading something from someone with a different voice...rather than the partisan tripe all the rage...this. i began to skim during one of the essays on the failing health of a friend in new york...as had the reader whose review is listed first...or it was at that point where interest failed for that reader.
essays cover a wide range of topics. some curious ideas about time...how and who defines time, as i read it...but i'm not the sharpest chisel in the toolbox so don't take my word for it. maybe i misunderstood...though i still came away with a new perspective on time. time after time. cue cindi.
and religious extremism...and reading something like this i can't help but compare and contrast it the world happening around me. Even before then, it had often been suspected that elements of the state’s machinery had been colluding in the production of communal violence; after the violence of the eighties, this became established as a fact. It became evident that certain parts of the state had been absorbed by—had indeed become sponsors of—criminal violence. No longer could the state be seen as a protagonist in its own right.
cue current political events. compare to the assassination of ghandi. ...were unlikely to heed a tiny group of concerned citizens. I was wrong. A document eventually produced by this team—a slim pamphlet entitled “Who Are the Guilty?”—has become a classic, a searing indictment of the politicians who incited the riots and the police who allowed the rioters to have their way.
and why bother to chronicle how the above quotes compare and contrast...more compare than contrast...to current events? polls show...a large number of...authorities cite...an informed source...or headlines from a favorite site...paraphrased "big tech censors...."
we very rarely hear anyone speak of doctrine or faith. In many of these areas, by a curious inversion, the language of religious hatred is not a religious language at all. The voices that spew hate invariably draw on more incendiary sources. One of these is the language of quantity, of number—statistics, in other words, that famous syntax of falsehood.
all to be mis-characterized by those with a microphone and a news camera.
also this interesting take...that there hasn't been the equivalent of...say...passage to india (my use of title...he used other)...related to the oil world. heh! all the literature that came from the search for spice. he does cite one work that might be worth looking into. Cities of Salt, the Jordanian writer Abdelrahman Munif’s monumental five-part cycle of novels dealing with the history of oil, ought to be regarded as a work of immense significance.
i lacked interest in many of the essays and time means more to me now that the days seem numbered.
essays cover a wide range of topics. some curious ideas about time...how and who defines time, as i read it...but i'm not the sharpest chisel in the toolbox so don't take my word for it. maybe i misunderstood...though i still came away with a new perspective on time. time after time. cue cindi.
and religious extremism...and reading something like this i can't help but compare and contrast it the world happening around me. Even before then, it had often been suspected that elements of the state’s machinery had been colluding in the production of communal violence; after the violence of the eighties, this became established as a fact. It became evident that certain parts of the state had been absorbed by—had indeed become sponsors of—criminal violence. No longer could the state be seen as a protagonist in its own right.
cue current political events. compare to the assassination of ghandi. ...were unlikely to heed a tiny group of concerned citizens. I was wrong. A document eventually produced by this team—a slim pamphlet entitled “Who Are the Guilty?”—has become a classic, a searing indictment of the politicians who incited the riots and the police who allowed the rioters to have their way.
and why bother to chronicle how the above quotes compare and contrast...more compare than contrast...to current events? polls show...a large number of...authorities cite...an informed source...or headlines from a favorite site...paraphrased "big tech censors...."
we very rarely hear anyone speak of doctrine or faith. In many of these areas, by a curious inversion, the language of religious hatred is not a religious language at all. The voices that spew hate invariably draw on more incendiary sources. One of these is the language of quantity, of number—statistics, in other words, that famous syntax of falsehood.
all to be mis-characterized by those with a microphone and a news camera.
also this interesting take...that there hasn't been the equivalent of...say...passage to india (my use of title...he used other)...related to the oil world. heh! all the literature that came from the search for spice. he does cite one work that might be worth looking into. Cities of Salt, the Jordanian writer Abdelrahman Munif’s monumental five-part cycle of novels dealing with the history of oil, ought to be regarded as a work of immense significance.
i lacked interest in many of the essays and time means more to me now that the days seem numbered.
May 8, 2022
Difficult to assess. I am a great fan of Ghosh, and have read nearly all his books. One of the best of all time was the novella 'Countdown', an essay on the nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan. I had been expecting that quality of reporting in this set of essays too, but was bitterly disappointed when I experienced a monotonal start to the book. I could not go on, as I kept losing concentration.
August 5, 2023
Random essays, each beautifully written and interesting.
August 26, 2018
Abituata a leggere i romanzi dell'autore, mi sono stupita per la prosa diretta e incisiva di questo libro.Ho trovato molto interessante sia che facesse un vero e proprio reportage di eventi importanti ( politici, solciali, atmosferici,...) vissuti e idagati in prima persona, sia come ha espresso i suoi punti di vista. Alcuni capitoli sono stati illuminandti e mi hanno permesso di comprendere come eventi spesso trascurati abbiano cambiato la storia di una nazione, altri, in verità solo uno, mi hanno un po' annoiata.In generale consifero questo libro molto interessante.
Read
August 20, 2024Read so far:
The town by the sea --3
Imperial temptations --
September 11 --
The greatest sorrow : times of joy recalled in wretchedness --
"The ghat of the only world" : Agha Shahid Ali in Brooklyn --
Countdown --
The march of the novel through history : the testimony of my grandfather's bookcase --
The fundamentalist challenge --
Petrofiction : the oil encounter and the novel --
At large in Burma --
The ghosts of Mrs. Ghandi --
An Egyptian in Baghdad --
Dancing in Cambodia --2
The human comedy in Cairo --2
Tibetan dinner --2
Four corners --3
The Imam and the Indian--3
The town by the sea --3
Imperial temptations --
September 11 --
The greatest sorrow : times of joy recalled in wretchedness --
"The ghat of the only world" : Agha Shahid Ali in Brooklyn --
Countdown --
The march of the novel through history : the testimony of my grandfather's bookcase --
The fundamentalist challenge --
Petrofiction : the oil encounter and the novel --
At large in Burma --
The ghosts of Mrs. Ghandi --
An Egyptian in Baghdad --
Dancing in Cambodia --2
The human comedy in Cairo --2
Tibetan dinner --2
Four corners --3
The Imam and the Indian--3
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews