Ghost-Eye

by Amitav Ghosh

Past and present collide in a novel about a girl who might just be a "case of the reincarnation type."

Varsha Gupta wants fish for lunch. Her family is shocked; the three-year-old has never tasted fish in her life. The Guptas are strict vegetarians and don’t allow it inside their Calcutta mansion. But Varsha claims she can remember another life, in a mud house by a river where she caught and cooked fish with a different mother.

Perplexed, the Guptas turn to Dr. Shoma Bose, a psychologist who has been investigating what are known as "cases of the reincarnation type" for years. But her understanding of the world is changed forever by Varsha's revelations.

Half a century later, Varsha's case file catches the attention of a group of environmental activists, and Shoma's nephew Dinu is drawn inexorably into their plans. As Dinu finds himself caught up in the search for Varsha, buried memories of his own past begin to surface.

Traveling between late 1960s Calcutta and present-day Brooklyn, Amitav Ghosh's Ghost-Eye is an urgent and expansive novel from one of our greatest living storytellers, about family, fate, and our fragile planet.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Magical Realism, India, Literary Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery

328 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 16, 2026

About the author

Amitav 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.

Reviews

[Aakriti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had me hooked because of the premise but it meanders somewhere in the second half and the entire idea of reincarnates assembling to fight off a conglomerate to save the environment was a bit unnecessary and too rushed. The revelation at the end was supposed to be but it gave me the ick. Love story between an otter reincarnated and a little girl lol what a joke. I understand the whole ecological activisim aspect of the story line but that just felt disjointed and rushed. And the character of Tipu was mind-numbingly irritating. I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes everytime he had a dialogue. Why did he talk like that?

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a novel which begins in 1969 Calcutta, Ghost-Eye by Amitav Ghosh is a story which pushes at the boundaries of belief while also facing the harsh realities of the 21st century’s collapsing environment. It starts with three year old Varsha Gupta demanding that she be fed fish. Her family is strictly vegetarian and has never had fish in the house so this request is as ridiculous as it is impossible for her caregivers and parents. As Varsha continues to refuse to eat unless given fish, her parents call their friend, a doctor, Monty Bose. Monty’s wife, Shoma is sister to Varsha’s mother. Monty and Shoma, a psychologist, become involved in the child’s care and Shoma gradually suspects that Varsha is remembering a past life.

From here we move back and forth in both time and place in the novel. Along with her other therapy work, Shoma continues her work with Varsha and other work in the paranormal realm in collaboration with a professor from the University of North Carolina who shares similar interests. Shoma also shares child-rearing of her sister’s son Dinu.

Dinu becomes a narrator in the novel as an adult, joining the story as the older generation age and begin to pass. As an adult, Dinu goes to college in the United States and ultimately lives in New York, with regular trips back to Calcutta to visit Shoma. The contemporary story moves into the area of environmental collapse fears and Ghosh uses magical realism in these later stages. I found this section very powerful and very exciting.

When I reached the end, I wanted more, not because I was dissatisfied but because I wanted more of these people in my life right now. I want them in my world. Not everyone will feel the same, I know. Magical realism alone is not for everyone. But the message of this book does seem to be for all who are looking for positive words in these negative times. I highly recommend this book to those who feel some pull from these ideas.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley.

[Chhavi · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up.

hmmmmmmmmm.
updated review: There certainly is a lot of fish in this novel.
The book moves at a steady clip, sometimes the epoch is uncertain at the start of a chapter; But if not quickly, the timelines do resolve. The story is absolutely fascinating and, as ever, the call to action in the eye of impending climate change is timely. But Ghosh's treatment and/or solution is a bit of a cop-out.

I saw him interviewed (and that's a kind way of describing what actually went down) by a journalist-author in Mumbai who waxed incessantly about fish curry and Ghosh's culinary skills but somehow managed to not ask him HOW and WHY he veered from his scientific bent to examine and accept this path for the tale.

I was dissatisfied with that evening. I was dissatisfied with the end of the book. I'd love to know what other people thought.

[Madhul Sharma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since magical realism is the few genres of fiction I enjoy, I was pretty excited to read this book, and am so glad I did! This is by no means Ghosh's best work, and is in fact very attached to some of his older books and themes, but it is a page turner.

What I love about his current writing is the overlap of climate change with poetry, beauty and magic, and I really really loved the process of the protagonist recreating a childhood Bengali dish in Brooklyn. I always read fiction to get back into reading, and Ghosh's writing is so smooth that I was up all Friday night with a book!!

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1960s Calcutta, a strict vegetarian family is rocked by a little girls hunger strike. If she doesn't get fish, she will eat nothing else. But it's not just a toddler tantrum, she has memories of an entire life as a fisherwoman, in a specific village, with a specific family, and she can prove it. As the story progresses she reveals further wonders, an ability to find things that are lost, and premonitions about floods and cyclones.
I liked this part of the story, but the modern storyline was less interesting. In fact, the novel as a whole became less and less interesting as it went on. By the end I was just skimming and didn't know or care what was happening.
The setting and magical realism were strong, but overall I was disappointed with this read.

[Almas Shamim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ghost-Eye
by Amitava Ghosh
⭐⭐

My first and sadly, last Amitava Ghosh read.
Now I don't consider myself an audience for Ghosh's books...just by the blurbs of his previous works. But... The primary theme of the book is reincarnation. So expecting a nice magical realism I picked it up. But, God, was I disappointed!

Summarising the main cons of the book:
1. Too Much- it starts with what looks like an attempt to give scientific explanations for reincarnation- which is all good, but soon falls back on pure "woo woo" (as the book mentions in one place) with some reincarnated people not only able to see the past but also the future..this main reincarnated girl can also project herself in different places (so, it's not a soul ka punarjanam but just a consciousness which is able to move in both directions of time..and space). And finally the book also brings in metempsychosis which (I learnt in this book) is reincarnation of animal as human (or vice versa). I mean pleeez!
Not that I find any of these ideas unbelievable... I mean I am a crazy woman with crazy beliefs, trust me. And reincarnation into different species is actually included in the larger Hindu philosophy (and as the book clarifies even by other sources including Plato) But all of this happening in the same story is just too much for me.


2. Too Many: What are the chances of you coming across a punarjanam case or someone who is prophetic or gets visions etc? you may know 1 person here and 1 person known to someone's someone. Right? I mean there's a reason why this falls in the realm of supernatural. Were such phenomena as common as in this book, they'd be considered only natural... nothing supernatural about them. In this story there are 2 individuals who are reincarnated- one of whom has a 'ghost eye' . Then one of the main characters who didn't have any abilities until very old, is resuscitated back after a heart attack and now also has a ghost eye. One of her friend's brothers is also a ghost eye. A helper working in this old lady's house is yet another ghost-eye. I mean c'mon!

3. Co-incidences galore: When Shoma (old lady mentioned above, but in this part she is still young) wants to research about fish, her FIL's library has a book about fishes from the Sunderbans where she gets to know EVERYTHING about them. When she needs to find a certain place, her FIL's library has a book with Sunderban's maps and geographical details. The narrator, Dinu, happens to find a single paper of a file which was categorically burnt.. and that single paper gives him a major clue. Dinu, when he has to cook Bengali fish in NY finds it - his friend's student's cousin has a shop with specific fish varieties.... read that again.. Narrator's friend's student's cousin. Mere zindagi mei yaha ek bhi jan nahi hai... shauhar bhi dusre sheher jakar baitha hai... aur is bhaisaab ke zindagi mei log nahi khatam ho rahe.
And honestly, the coincidence bit was so jarring. It felt like very amateur writing... again chhota muh badi baat. I am a nobody. ..and Amitava Ghosh is Amitava Ghosh... But seriously? Log yeh padhke fida ho rahe hai?

4. Forced themes: I know 1 or 2 of his previous works were centred around environment. And this one could have well been that just with the reincarnation bit. But the part which covers the reincarnated child's later life has been forcefully adapted to align with conservation/envt.activism.

5. Forgettable characters: All of them. Nothing makes the characters likeable or relatable. But special mention for Tipu who only ever appears on calls but is just so... knife-scratching-on-a-steel-plate kind of irritating.

6. Diaspora: pet peeve...I don't like diaspora stories. I knew that about Amitava Ghosh hence was never keen on reading him but here he was...writing on a supernatural topic.

Summarising the Pros:
1. At some point, the book ends.

I don't want to spend any more time reviewing this book. Suffice it to say that it was not meant for me and I wasn't meant for it. I'm sure there are people out there who'd be mind blown by this story. Good for them. Saprem Namaskar. 🙏🏽

[Mridula Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ghost-Eye is set across two timelines, beginning in 1969 Calcutta and unfolding into the pandemic-era present, with Kolkata remaining the narrative and emotional anchor throughout. The novel opens with Varsha, a three-year-old girl in a wealthy Marwari vegetarian household, who insists she remembers a previous life marked by poverty, fishing, rice cultivation, and survival by the river. Her demand for fish, trivial on the surface, initiates a deeper conflict around memory, belonging, and cultural boundaries.

Varsha’s case is taken seriously by Shoma, a psychiatrist studying reincarnation, and Monty, a paediatrician, who subject her memories to practical testing, particularly through food and everyday knowledge. These investigations suggest that Varsha’s recollections are precise and embodied, eventually pointing toward a past life in present-day Bangladesh. Around this central narrative, the novel incorporates histories of Partition, displacement, Burmese migration, Bangladeshi crossings, political unrest in Calcutta, Cold War anxieties, and later the constraints of the COVID pandemic.

The book places psychological inquiry alongside folk belief systems and myth without clearly privileging one over the other. Burmese nats, the goddess Manasa, visions, prophecies, and individuals with unusual perceptual abilities coexist with psychiatry, environmental activism, and historical realism. As the narrative progresses, the focus shifts toward the Sundarbans, where ecological degradation and industrial intrusion threaten land and water that are treated as both sacred and communal.

One element that felt less convincing was the reincarnation link involving Dinu, which appeared overly constructed in order to reinforce connections between characters. While this choice aligns with the novel’s broader ecological and metaphysical framework, it weakens the internal logic of the narrative at key moments.

Overall, Ghost-Eye functions as environmental fiction grounded in history, myth, and memory, using layered timelines and belief systems to explore the consequences of disrupting ecological and cultural continuity. Despite moments of repetition and narrative excess, the novel remains ambitious in scope and intent, offering a sustained meditation on land, displacement, and the persistence of the past.

[emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Cravings for certain kinds of food are quite common when there are past-life memories.’

‘But after a while it became clear to us that none of it was making a dent. And it wasn’t because people didn’t know that the world is going down in flames—So there we were, standing under the hot sun, miles from anywhere—That’s how we began to figure out what’s going on in their heads: they know the world is heading towards some kind of catastrophe— maybe another pandemic, or a massive AI malfunction, or runaway nanobots or some shit like that. They don’t care what it is as long as the outcome is the same: chaos around the world, billions dying, billions more killing each other—and all of it leading to a massive collapse in the global population.’

‘What do you do when you discover that you’re at the receivin’ end of a war of extermination? You figure out a way to screw up their big plan. And how do you do that? You survive—and help others in your community survive as well. And what’s the best way to do that? Seems to me that you’ve gotta be in a place you know well, and if that place knows you too, it’ll help you. I mean, isn’t that what forests and deserts and oceans have always done? Haven’t they always taught people who were willing to learn how to survive even when the going got rough?’

‘What’s going on here is a fucking war—a war of extermination like the one white settlers waged against native peoples in America and Australia. What they want to do is to eliminate us by weaponising the environment, just as they did back then.’

‘But—ever since I got bitten by that snake in the Manasa temple, I … I don’t know how to explain it, but I have these flashes where I see things and hear things—Remember what happened off the coast of Sicily when I was in that sinking refugee boat?’

‘A guard hit the old woman with a rifle butt and she fell on the ground. But as she was lying there, bleeding, she looked me directly in the eye and said, “Remember: Manasa Devi does not forget.”’

‘The next morning a storm broke and it rained through the day and into the night. When darkness fell the Englishman began to play his clarinet again, its piercing sound carrying deep into the forest. Then came another sound, the tinkling of an elephant’s bell, which should not have been heard at that time of the night because the animals were supposed to be tethered in the stockade. But the sound kept coming and it soon became clear that an elephant had broken loose and was fast approaching the camp. When it came into view it was seen to be none other than the dead mahout’s elephant, an old, experienced animal who had been inconsolable since its rider’s death. It was advancing at a run, alone, with no one guiding it. Up in his room the Englishman heard the sound too, and when he looked out of his window he saw that the elephant was headed towards his hut. Panic-stricken, he picked up his big rifle and began to fire at the animal. He hit it once, twice, three times but still the old elephant kept coming, blood streaming down its forehead, until at last it flung its full weight against the hut’s bamboo stilts. When the Englishman fell to the ground the elephant collapsed on top of him, killing him instantly.’

‘‘These stupid city people can’t tell the difference between a dangerous snake and a harmless rat snake like that one. I knew they’d kill it if they saw it and then there would be trouble.’ He said this in a way that sent a shiver down my spine. ‘Trouble? For whom?’’

‘One of the surprising findings of the academic research in this field, she went on to explain, was that even for people who accepted reincarnation as a metaphysical or religious truth—which included not just Hindus, Jains and Buddhists, but also some indigenous groups like the Druze of Syria and various Native American tribes—the occurrence of such a case within their own families was quite distressing. ‘And with Varsha,’ Shoma added, ‘we have to remember that her memories are of a life that was completely different from her present circumstances in every sense: caste, community, economic status, dietary habits and so on. In such instances it’s quite common for families to react very adversely.’’

‘‘Are you saying you don’t believe in karma?’ asked Abhay, raising an eyebrow. Shoma shook her head. What she believed personally wasn’t important, she told him. It was just that the data didn’t support the idea that people could earn themselves a better future life by accumulating merit and doing good deeds in this one. What the research showed, in fact, was that a disproportionate number of such cases were the result of violent deaths. In other words, ‘cases of the reincarnation type’ often remembered past lives that had ended because of murder, suicide, war, plane crashes, accidents, animal attacks and so on—it was as if people whose lives had been cut abruptly short were seeking to come back into the world. It was one of the few discernible patterns in such cases.’

‘To begin with there was the girl’s age: in such cases children generally began expressing their memories of earlier lives between the ages of three and five. Such children were also often very precocious and sometimes displayed exceptional, and even inexplicable, linguistic abilities. Another, somewhat more unusual pattern in such cases, was the carrying over of physical traces of an earlier life, in the form of birthmarks and scars. Often these traces would indicate the location of wounds that had resulted in the termination of earlier life—for example by marking the entry points of bullets, knives and other weapons. It was quite possible that the birthmarks on Varsha’s ribcage were instances of this phenomenon.’

‘What you’ve been writing is what will revive their memories, and along with that, their powers. The stuff about your aunt, and you and that house—that’s going to be an essential part of their reawakening. That’s what will make it believable for them. That’s why you’ve got to go on doing what you’re doing—That’s why you can’t stop—you’ve gotta keep your story going.’

‘‘But look at the frequency, Monty,’ said Shoma, pointing at the ivory keys. ‘It’s the AM key that’s down. I never listen to AM stations. I’m sure I didn’t push that key.’ ‘You must have done it by mistake,’ said Monty. He turned the volume dial until the tuning panel went dark. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The radio is definitely off now, so let’s get some sleep.’ We went back to our beds. I was just about to drift off when the radio suddenly came to life again.’

[Riddhi Kishnadwala · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished Ghost Eye and honestly, Amitav Ghosh just has a way of making you feel like the air in the room has gotten colder.
​This isn't your typical jump-scare horror story. It’s more of a "creeping realization" kind of book. It follows a character stuck between modern life and some really heavy family/historical secrets. Ghosh blends science and folklore so smoothly that by the end, you’re kind of questioning what’s actually real.

[Sahitya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for my book club. Easy to read along despite multiple timelines and many many characters. I love books with food descriptions. Reincarnation is another trope I love, and I thought it was explored interestingly. But towards the end, it meandered quite a bit and ended abruptly. Not satisfied with the end of this author’s book for the second time this year.

[Nafisa]

"Trust me: it's not we who choose the myths that guide our lives; it's they who choose us. But once you've been chosen, beware, because they'll always be with you."

Here, I think Amitav Ghosh is speaking to us, his readers. Indeed, the myth of Manasa Devi and the setting of a supernatural Sundarbans are the lores that Ghosh have chosen, or rather, the ones that have chosen him. Luckily, the themes Ghosh deals with here are ones that I am biased towards, as an animist and especially as a Bengali person deeply interested in local folklore. To those less inclined, this might feel like Ghosh is writing the same book over and over again. Still, this was incredibly readable.

[ritoja · Rating 3 out of 5]

congratulations amitav ghosh you would love metazooa and metaflora

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept was interesting, but then it quickly turned into a dissertation on past lives. I need a strong plot. Didn't stick around to find out if it changed later.

[Saumya Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a quick read it was. Very different from other Amitav Ghosh's Books.

[Shefali Tripathi Mehta]

It is a riveting read in parts, as any centred on the theme of past lives/rebirth, heightened awareness of the spiritual world and divine retribution. Two narratives, one in the 2020s COVID-phase in Brooklyn and another in the late 60s in Calcutta, run in parallel and come together most fantastically in the end.

The story begins with a child who remembers her past life. The child has, in the family of her psychologist, another child, who grows up to have a ‘son figure’ who can perceive the spiritual realm because of his ‘ghost eye’ (heterochromia). There is also a servant who is steered to save these people from many dangers because he is guided by a ‘master’, a Buddhist monk. Then, there is also the psychologist’s own clairvoyance – the tying together of these lives into one story seemed quite contrived in the absence of a ‘sense’ of magic realism. The wrath of the goddess of snakes, Manasa Devi, in the end, also seemed stretched too far.

The common understanding of a prodigy is a child under 10 years who has a high IQ and exceptional talent in one or more domains. This, researchers believe, could be due to genetic or family environment. So, it is quite surprising that the author attributes this to children who remember their past lives because they have died sudden, traumatic deaths. Many, many more people die such deaths than children who remember their past lives.

The story does get spooky at times. Really spooky. And offers an enjoyable, unputdownable sort of read. Also, parts of it are quite suspenseful.

There are extended descriptions of the variety of fish that Bengalis eat – what each looks like, how they are cooked (traditionally), the cuts, the ingredients and the cooking styles. Food connoisseurs will enjoy these parts.

Then, of course, very broadly, the novel is about ecological concerns. A reality blindingly apparent, but the ‘setting right’ of it is left to the ‘imagined’, like it is beyond human capacity now – a doomsday prophecy for the ‘real’ world.

[Vaibhav Srivastav · Rating 2 out of 5]

It feels weird to see one of your favourite authors spiral down (so to speak), a lot of writing in this book is deeply self indulgent and childish. There is a surfeit of coincidence and an excess of suspension of disbelief. I thought Gun Island was an exception but this new book is making me wary of Amitav Ghosh's writings.

[Elfundertheshelf · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fishy, fishy book.
Reincarnation theory forms one of the pillars of Hinduism as a religion, within which the origin of life itself is cyclic in nature. The purpose of a soul is to relieve itself (attain salvation) of this cycle through actions pertaining to a higher purpose — put in simplified terms. Ghosh’s ‘Ghost-Eye’ plays around this idea as a central theme.
In 1960s Calcutta three year old Varsha, born to the prosperous Guptas is believed to be a reincarnation of a rural Bengali fisher woman much to the dismay of her insufferable, close minded mother (loved her dad though 10/10 good man).
First the positives :
The author himself was born and raised in the city. Consequently the nostalgia, fondness and the rhythm of Calcutta is evident through his pen. He invites those from the land to dive into the omnipotent nostalgia, because Calcutta lives both in the present and in the past. To those not from here he offers an intimate look into modern, upper and, lower middle-class Bengali life, interweaving it with the intrinsic socio-politics. He makes effort to be inclusive in his writing so that the book is not restricted by culture.
There is enough commentary on several horrific, course altering modern political events across India, that it invites curiosity without sounding preachy. The subtle nods to the weaponization of cuisine that piggy backs on religious beliefs; the imposed religious superiority; the intimate ties of language, dialects and origin, help to paint a vivid picture of rural and urban Bengal simultaneously with the conditions/freedom of women being linked to class and wealth.
That is all the positives I have.
Despite its many, many hiccups the book made me sit through to the end because the themes were interesting enough, even though some of them felt rushed. Though marketed as climate fiction , to me it felt more like the author’s personal commentary on climate and environmental crises. There are attempts to tie in local folklore with the themes though none of it was explored well enough.
Hinduism itself being ancient, over time as it spread and divided it began to absorb a lot of local folktales and deities within its larger mythology. One such being the one eyed serpent goddess primarily worshipped among farmers and fisherfolk around Bengal and the eastern regions of India. She is a nature goddess hailed as the keeper of snakes who grants wishes, and protection from their venom, it is evident why she would be popular among agricultural communities .
Her myth and origin was touched upon but not enough to make any sort of solid connection with the main narrative. It was lackluster at best. It does not help that there are also attempts to incorporate Buddhist and Burmese religious beliefs. The point being to show that natural order and the spirit world is its own self-governed system, it does not land as smoothly.
Writing, dialogue, and, flow is clunky. The lingo feels like a caricature of itself making the prose sound disjointed at best. The entire book was littered with too many plot conveniences shoe-horned in to resolve questions readers may have. The preset timeline set during the pandemic felt the weakest and the most frustrating to read. It made the narrator insufferable to me with his self-proclaimed importance. The second half veered too far from the main story. Here I was wanting to learn more of Varsha and her obsession with fish but the narrator’s childhood held me hostage — great opportunities to explore the multicultural fabric of the province of Bengal in relation to the country were abandoned in favor of a weird love story between two reincarnated beings.
Well that was a jump scare and absurd to the core.
The author seemed to be juggling too many ideas, concepts, and events both spiritual and mortal. I understand the need to provide in-depth descriptions of the dominant pescetarian diet of Bengal especially in the rural villages near the deltaic region where fishing is the primary livelihood. I do not understand why I am supposed to be interested in that many scientific fish names except to applaud Ghosh uncle on his extensive research and knowledge. (We get it you read papers to write this).

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)

Thank you to NetGalley, Amitav Ghosh, and RB Media Recorded Books for providing me with an advanced audiobook copy of Ghost-Eye.

Ghost-Eye offers a fresh and thought-provoking take on a familiar narrative, weaving together themes of colonialism, identity, and survival through a richly detailed cultural lens. Amitav Ghosh immerses readers in the sights, food, and traditions of the time, creating a vivid backdrop that brings the story to life.

One of the highlights of the novel was the way the culture and history were woven into the narrative. The audiobook narration by Ranjit Madgavkar added depth and authenticity, enhancing the listening experience and making the characters feel real and engaging.

While I found some sections slower than I would have liked, particularly in the middle, the story’s unique perspective and strong sense of culture kept me invested. Overall, Ghost-Eye is a beautifully crafted novel that offers readers a different way of looking at a familiar story. It is a rewarding read for those who enjoy historical fiction rich in culture, atmosphere, and reflection.

[S Ashok · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this novel, Amithav Gosh explores what lies beyond our world of reason. Is there anything beyond what we experience and understand it through reason. Through a life of a girl who is recollecting memories from past life, Gosh explores whether this mysticism could be used to save this planet in peril facing an environmental catastrophe.
Another theme that is recurring is to knowing things holistically, comprehending the world beyond reason, using intuition to arrive at different meaning to our lives. The lives of distinct individuals separated by space, time and cultural are united in a way that this work brings out brilliantly.

[Shashank · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of the very different themes explored by the author, I think it is a small step towards magical realism and supernatural themes. The plot revolved around Calcutta of the 70s-80s, Boston, Sunderbans and the core of theme of Bengal and Bengali’s as an identity. These places and themes have been recurrent even in the past works of the writer (Junglenama, The Great Derangement). It didn’t click with me well, a dose of deja vu from all the work I have admired from the writer, hence a bit disappointing for me. Maybe next time? Sure lets wait.

[Yukti Sharma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely wild storyline and yet this is nuanced, delicate and miraculous!

after a really long time, the reincarnation and super powers themes are explored in the context of the environment. Love it !

there are recipes, folks tales, jurisprudence on rights of rivers, GMOs, fascist capitalist, gen Z activists, old school doctors, marwari photographers, badass stock brokers, burmese fortune tellers, dreamers and doers.

it is truly wild.

[Preeti]

I should be put inside the ' box of shame' for attempting to read the latest book of Amitav Ghosh without reading any of his earlier work. I thought, I have read some of his non fiction work on Climate crisis and that will be enough. But, it seems a lot of these characters make a reappearance here. ...I was super engaged till 50-55% mark but now by 70%, I feeling a bit lost.
So, I am going back to read some of his earlier works.

[Srushti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Supremely readable, finished in a day- the overlaps in some places are incredulous but that’s a part of Ghosh’s storytelling I suppose. The themes are married together well but the irruption and fighting against crony capitalism story arc was a bit on the nose I felt. Other than that magical realism and overlapping of different worlds-material and otherwise- was wonderful

[Marianne Long · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting exploration of possibly remembering a past life

The first part of this book was very compelling. A three year old girl in a devout vegetarian household in India suddenly demands fish, saying she ate it in a previous life. This throws the household into upheaval. The center section of the book developing this story line didn't hold my attention well, but the conclusion of the book was very satisfying. Recommended with 3.5 stars.

[Simran · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 actually! 🥹❤️

[Ananya S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusing but not the best Amitav Ghosh work by a mile.

[Anandita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not his best work and there were too many references back to the earlier book on the subdarbans. I prefer his historical fiction to the supernatural stuff. Not for me.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ghost-Eye started out as a five-star read. I really loved most of the book. Due to the most cringe-worthy dialogue by one of the characters, I barely got through it. What was the author thinking?

[Akshat Upadhyay · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a lot to unpack here.
First the story. Let’s get the story’s major non-spoiler parts out of the way, since the fiction serves only as a vessel to carry forward ideas and introduce some new ones that I first encountered in The Nutmeg’s Curse and later in Gun Island and Wild Fictions. The chapters alternate between two timelines: 1969 and 2019. The former is about Varsha Gupta - a 3 year old born in a pure vegetarian Marwari family in then Calcutta who starts ‘remembering’ her past life and yearns for fish - a shock to her family. She is then examined by Shoma Bose, a psychologist who is coincidentally a PhD from the University of Virginia in the field of ‘cases of the reincarnation type’. Through a series of tests using culinary combinations of Bengali fish preparation, she confirms her hypothesis about Varsha’s previous life as a fisherwoman in the Sunderbans and how she was killed. In the meantime, other characters in this timeline encountered include Dev, a Nepalese boy from Burma, through which Nat - a family of Burmese spirits - is introduced to the readers. One of these spirits, the Shindaw Nat plays a major role in the story - as a bridge between incidents, cases of precognition and remote viewing mostly.
This timeline, arguably, is the more engaging of the two, as it focuses on the exploration of - Calcutta in the late 1960s, the distance between faith and praxis when the Gupta family comes face to face with reincarnation within their family , the innovative way through which Shoma deduces the background of Varsha’s previous self and finally the significant convergence and divergences between science and belief.
The timeline of 2019-2020 is centred on an ailing Shoma Bose and her nephew Dinanath Datta aka Dinu, whose life flits between New York and Kolkata. We also meet Tipu and Rafi whom we had first encountered in the author’s 2019 book, The Gun Island, and who are now managing a trust in the Sundarbans. The latter somehow impress upon the former the importance of unveiling the identity of one Case J, under Shoma Bose in the late 1960s and her importance to their mission of stopping corporate plunder of the Sundarbans. And it is in this part that the writing and story both flounder. The reasons behind Tipu’s demands are not very convincing and once we reach the climax of the book, the plot just fizzles out. The dialogues between Tipu and Dinu are cringe and Tipu’s Brooklyn affectation sounds very amateurish. Also, the amount of coincidences that happen to assist Dinu in his search for Case J are too many to be statistically insignificant. Corporate power is also referred to as a monolithic abstraction which is wholly evil. There is a minor ‘reveal’ towards the end which is average.

I don’t know whether it was meant as a tip of the hat to a famous writer or towards an obsessive search for extraterrestrial life but there are episodic references to orbs of light whenever something bad is about to happen in the world (Stephen King’s IT and incidents of alien UFOs in the documentary Age of Disclosure).
Now that the story is laid out, it’s time for the ideas.
The core of the book is about the interconnectedness of life across space and time. The book argues for a more compassionate and unconventional take on what life and living means - beyond materialism and embracing mysticism. Ghosh doubles down on his critique of the Cartesian notion of the mind-matter duality; that humans, non-humans and even objects considered part of the ‘non-living’ world - all are part of a wider continuum of consciousness. Hindus call it the Brahman which is an all-pervading consciousness. The Atman is the physical manifestation of that Brahman which is expressed in multiple forms including humans.
Ghosh mounts a saturation assault on all the epistemic and ontological truths held dear by humans and dissects certain assumptions passed on through generations. All these can be boiled down to the fact that humans consider that the non-human and non-living world is inert till humans give it meaning. He braids the laboratory (Bohr, Bose), the archive (Cold War parapsychology, Soviet sky incidents), and the subcontinent’s mythic textures (Manasa Devi, Sahajiya traditions, animist speech across species) to propose a reality where consciousness and agency leak across the borders we police. Reincarnation becomes both a doctrinal claim and a narrative ethics that forces responsibility to travel across lifetimes and ecosystems, making the Sundarbans and Calcutta moral instruments with their own agency.
His biggest action through the story: restore legitimacy to non-linear time, porous personhood, animacy in the “non-living,” moral charge of matter and knowledge that arrives via body, dream, omen and story rather than instruments alone. He reiterates that the boundary between the living and non-living is constructed in human minds, especially through European dominated science rather than the reality “as-it-is”. JC Bose plight in Europe (referenced in the book early) exemplifies the discrimination faced by indigenous researchers who were audacious enough to question the primacy of Cartesian duality. Bose’s original sin was not limited to questioning the European ‘mental model’, so to say, but also being colonised and using Western principles to draw conclusions that conformed more to what was then termed Eastern mysticism.
By using reincarnation as a plot device , Ghost inverts the comfortable conventions of the linearity of time (at human scale) and argues for a more cyclical narrative. He tantalisingly holds a question over everyone’s head: if one assumes that reincarnation occurs, then what happens in the interregnum between the passing of a soul from one body to another. He also brings in a counter-question within the same section: what if the concept of karma is a human notion of trying to bring order and (dare I say predictability) to the concept of birth and re-birth and imposing some sort of control over this cycle.
There is a very small para where Tipu, during his harangue about corporate power calls into question the entire scaffolding of AI achieving human intelligence. He argues that AI was conceptualised as mimicking the human brain which was supposed to be the site of human intelligence. However, it is the body with its gravy train of feelings, premonitions and forebodings, that is actually responsible for intelligence and the brain “only gets in the way”. This is provocative on purpose. It is a rebuke to the techno-utopian idea that mind is just computation. Even if the claim is overstated, it works as novelistic polemic and is meant to sting.
The book weaves its tale around the concept of structural violence, as Ghosh’s long-running preoccupation is the climate crisis not just as a scientific issue, but as a crisis of imagination and form. Snippets from his writing recall the efforts by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who places indigenous knowledge on equal footing with scientific knowledge, treating plants as teachers not resources and framing ecology as reciprocity. This form of theorising is reinforced by a lecture on Pilgrims and Thanksgiving Day by Dr Roy Casagranda where he argues that when Pilgrims, a group of radical religious zealots who arrived in Massachusetts with "no idea how to farm or survive”, they were saved by Native Americans who gave them seeds and food to prevent them from starving from death. Dr Roy argues that Americans often hold two contradictory ideas simultaneously: that Native Americans were "savages" who didn't know how to farm (justifying European land theft) yet they also celebrate a holiday where those same "savages" taught the Europeans how to farm. Some of the tribes like Iroquois had complex constitutions, bicameral legislatures (including a lower house run entirely by women) and established agricultural systems long before European arrival. Certain movies like Avatar (Part I) also provide an interesting dramatisation of this relationship. The Tree of Life can be imagined as a networked system where roots act as data conduits, memory is stored in ecology and identity is distributed across a biospheric system.
Ghosh also takes a jab at the tech bro culture and the poisonous idea of progress as being too techno-centric. The Malthusian belief that catastrophe is an inevitable regulatory mechanism resurfaces in 21st century techno-elite imagination where climate collapse, resource scarcity and social breakdown are treated as unavoidable and therefore best managed through technological enclosures rather than prevented through collective restraint or repair. The Ark (not mentioned in the book but emerges as a collective for the brain upload experiments, anti-ageing, seed vaults and climate-resilient enclaves) becomes a chilling metaphor for this mindset: a finite, exclusionary vessel built by those with foresight, capital and technical skill, justified by a narrative that frames mass death as both natural and morally neutral. This technocentric vision of progress, Ghosh suggests, crowds out older and less glamorous notions of advancement rooted in reciprocity, ecological balance and shared vulnerability which are ways of living that indigenous societies practiced but colonial modernity systematically dismantled. What Ghost Eye ultimately questions is not technology itself, but the quiet acceptance of selective survival as a reasonable outcome and the way technicism anesthetises moral discomfort by translating civilisational failure into an optimisation problem. Progress, in this telling, becomes a machine that saves a few while rendering the rest conceptually expendable.
In Ghosh’s telling, the planet is alive in more ways than one but our conventions and frames of mind do not allow us to notice them. Modernity survives by declaring most of that aliveness “irrational.” The real antagonist is not superstition; it’s technicism which is the insistence that only one kind of knowing is legitimate.
Ghost Eye does not question whether superstitious practices are to be believed or whether faith trumps science or vice-versa. He just asks a simple question: why do we believe one set of principles over another?

[nandana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely liked this more than Gun Island, and was hella hooked. but also felt it was extremely rushed, and didn't have the attention to detail that drew me to his writing in his older novels. i'm just sad because i was super excited for this.