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?

[Cherisa B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Modern. Classic. Magical. Astonishing. Wonderful.
I'm turning back to page 1 and starting again.

Second reading was even better.

[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.

[Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amitav Ghosh like a master spider has expertly woven in all the ends of his many threaded story and now I'm left bereft because it has ended and I don't want to be alone without it ......

Food, family, memories, past lives, love, love for our world, our future, nature, animals, fish, heterochromia, reincarnation, are the multicoloured, multi sensory threads that weave his story and I'm left with 'I want to eat fish', I want to know more, I want to do more, I want to experience more, I need more, more hope, more belief that we'll find a way out of this disaster that's our current world.

Excellent narration by Ranjit Madgavkar

An audiobook ARC kindly provided by author/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!!

[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. 🙏🏽

[Phyllis · Rating 5 out of 5]

In what feels much more like a synchronicity than a coincidence, I have been reading this novel in the aftermath of and during the ongoing rescue efforts following the mud slides and flooding in Nepal and Tibet as a result of a glacier breaking. I have never previously read anything by Ghosh, but now I have his entire backlist on my “to be read” shelf and I am off to find copies of them this weekend.

[jrendocrine at least reading is good · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up.
This appears to be a re-do of Ghosh's 2019 book, Gun Island: the same characters (even same names) reappear around the author's passionate cri de coeur for saving the Sundarbans.

This later version is more successful than Gun Island. It has 2 time lines - one in the 1960s where a 3 year old girl in Calcutta remembers her previous life as a Bengali fish cook, and one a Covid story where the narrator, relocated to Brooklyn but with strong ties to Calcutta and to resistance movements to plunder and degradation of the Sundarbans. The story moves along well and is engaging from the start. The mysticism, which seems to part of everything that Ghosh writes, is here the panoply of Indian land/animal spirits, reincarnation, and the personhood of animals and places - it's really rather tempting. The characters are excellent and specific - the 3 best are Varsha, the principal "Ghost-Eye" (people who exist on several planes), Dr Soma, a pediatric psychiatrist who works with Varsha and her family, and a Burmese mystic, Dev, who weaves in and around everyone in the story. I get the impression that Ghosh fully embraces/believes in the mystic.

What doesn't work is the dialogue, which makes up a large part of the book. Noted by other readers, it's leaden and unconvincing, and lands with a splat.

Things I learned: ways that Bengalis prepare fish, fish in general including Asian species that have invaded North American waters (Ghosh continues to be very interested in the despoiling of our planet). I learned about Indian mysticism.

Now two books into the crisis of the Sundarbans, Ghosh is to be congratulated for finding a way to get this story of despoilment out into the world.

[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.’

[Rendezvouswithbooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not a fan of Magical Realism but Ghosh has the ability to make me one. Ghosh very smartly weaves a modern environmental investigative story with supernatural folklore. In this story past life & present life run parallelly. How memories of past life can invade the present & how traces of each leave a mark

It starts in Calcutta (now Kolkata) of 1969. The key to enjoying this book is to go in blind & then to flow with the narrative. Hence I won't discuss the story much except that some of the characters like Dr. Shoma Bose, a research psychiatrist & Varsha, who at the age of three retains vivid memories of her past life. are completely unforgettable characters


Also this one is a treat to read for Sea food lovers. Such in-depth step by step discussion of so many Indian fish curry recipes makes it an aphrodisiac delight. The names of so many fishes have been discussed making it quite an engaging experience

Yes by the end things start falling into places little too conveniently but the overall experience was much more delightful in comparison to this small hiccup

I absolutely loved this one and can't recommend it enough

[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.

[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).

[Baljit · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was amazing!
The storyline was original, and an unusual blend of tradition, historical events, psychological and paranormal elements with Climate change. The novel delves straight into the change in the behavior of a toddler in a middle class family, Varsha, who suddenly exhibits unusual behavior, and claims to different parents, a different home, a fish diet and persists with her demands. She throws the household into chaos and has to consult a psychologist.

Ghosh’s writing is so fluid and the storyline moves with steady momentum, to link the various characters past and present. Most of the story is related by Dinu who is linking events, past and present, after his aunt’s passing. All the characters, from the Cook, Husna, Dev, the carer, the Buddhist priest, Shadaw, play a role in the search to uncover the mystery of past events.

The conclusion was unique as Dinu learns of his early childhood and his link to Varsha.

[Karyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Its the first time I am read something by this author.
It dealt with magical realism and reincarnation - that is what caught my attention.
It runs in dual time zones, between 70's Calcutta and present day New York.
Varsha a little girl, born into a Marwari Family - which is strictly vegetarian suddenly starts throwing tantrums to eat Fish curry and rice. The family is shocked and they take the help of a psychologist who specialises in such cases of reincarnation.
Years later this case comes up during an Environmental issue dealing with the Sundarbans.
Its very descriptive, the settings in Calcutta, the food eaten by the people living there.
Lots of fish talk and cooking going on.
The story does keep you engaged going back and forth but in the end I was not sure about it.
It kind of felt what did I just read.

[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.

[Royce · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this story. Amitav Ghosh is one of the best storytellers writing today. Highly recommended.

[Bob Wainess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely inviting story of 20th century Calcutta family with themes of reincarnation, spirits, and global warming. The story is told by a strict materialist who thinks all this reincarnation and spirit stuff is crazy BS. This POV is very important and it makes all the other stuff make sense. It's a good story for scientific types who are open to the idea of past lives with a climate change narrative. It's a very warm and accessible story. Here is NYT positive review. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/16/bo...

[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.

[Shruti Sharma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Calcutta, 1960. A strictly vegetarian Marwari household is in an uproar because their three-year-old, Varsha, has suddenly demanded fish — not to play with, but to eat. Turns out she’s remembering a past life, where she used to catch fish and cook scrumptious meals by a river, hence the craving. Varsha isn’t just carrying a haptic memory from her past life — she’s what’s called “a case of the reincarnation type,” a Ghost-Eye: a three-year-old who can travel distances and see things miles away without moving an inch, recognise every native fish of Calcutta, and have premonitions of bad things about to happen — to her or to the people she loves.

The premise alone was enough to pull me in. I’d never read a book built around a “case of reincarnation type.” But what Ghosh does with it is something I haven’t seen attempted before. He weaves it into environmental fiction, setting his characters on a mission to save our world using Varsha’s powers. Whether he pulls it off, I’ll leave you to find out. But here’s what stayed with me:

Food as a caste marker : Varsha’s family lives in cosmopolitan Calcutta, but food inside their home still runs on strict rules—no fish, no eggs, no meat, ever. They put tradition over everything else. Vegetarianism is carried like a marker of purity, of being “upper” in a hierarchy. So when Varsha asks for fish, the family doesn’t just recoil, they let her starve for two days, hoping she’ll relent.

When they are told by Dr. Shoma, who is the treating psychiatrist, about the possibility of reincarnation, the fish itself isn’t as bothersome to them anymore. It’s where the memory comes from: a past life as a lowly fisherwoman, ladling out curry in a mud house by a river.

A reincarnation is unsettling enough. A reincarnation that connect their child to a caste they don’t recognise or acknowledge, that’s the real horror for this household.

The Prodigy with a question mark : We love a prodigy as long as the talent fits our approved list. A child who plays chess like a grandmaster or picks up a violin at four gets applauded. But a child who carries indigenous knowledge across a lifetime is frowned upon.

Ghosh quietly asks why and prods us to look deeply into our biases. Why one kind of genius fits neatly into our idea of achievement, and the other doesn’t?

Development, really?

This is where the book stopped being just a story about a gifted little girl and turned into something closer to a warning. Ghosh lays out, in painstaking and often devastating detail, everything that’s happening to this country under the garb of “development” and “progress”.

Rivers erased, land cleared, ecosystems collapsed, all while the people footing the bill are told it’s for their own good. “You’ll get road to your village.” “You’ll get water in your taps, running 24*7”. “You’ll get rich if you sell your land. In the village, you’ll always be poor..” And we all know how that pans out.

It’s fiction, but barely. And that’s precisely what makes it so unsettling. I’ve always believed fiction gets closest to the truth when it stops feeling invented.

Who bears the loss?

When lands clear for power plants, when mountains are mined for minerals, it’s the people who get displaced- the native, indigenous species who have been protecting the forests, rivers and mountains since ages. Often, when the project isn’t executed properly, owing to corruption and false promises, it ends up harming the ecology of the area more than advancing it.

And the people in power, who commemorated the project, or the big corporation slicks away without any responsibility or accountability.

It’s the local tribe, who bears the brunt, in any case.

Fair to ask— it’s development, but for who?

Overall, a wonderful work of fiction if you love stories with a good twist. A bit of a Bollywood ending, which — to me — didn't quite land. And there are other pieces as well, sparse but still there— like characters built shallow, too much explanation and a bit of overstretch in some places, especially while cooking the native cuisine. But still, a fascinating read.

[Kyle C · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I read early reviews of this book, I was immediately intrigued by its weird combination of mythic fantasy and ecological messianism. There's a reincarnated three-year-old girl who remembers her past life, has prophetic visions, and possesses a preternatural gift for identifying species of fish; there are paranormal researchers investigating sentient trees; there are snake gods and dryadic spirits lurking around gentrifying bungalows; there is a levitating guru, a man who was an otter in a past life, and a team of psychic activists trying to track down a mysterious case file from the 1960s documenting a premonition. Somehow—somehow!—all of these characters tie up into a plot to save a deserted sanctuary from becoming a coal-burning power plant. In order to resist corporate greed and the ecological predations of the fossil-fuel industry, everyone must tap into their past lives and commune with nature.

The concept is interesting, the execution is a little flummoxing. I agree with many of the criticisms in the review published by the Guardian—the writing can be cliched, the characters wooden, the plot lagging. The novel is best when it describes the sensuous delights of Bengali food. To see the book in eco-critical terms, I would say the novel is even more baffling. Are we—we environmentally conscious, climate-science believers—really at such a point of pessimism that we can only imagine nature saved by supernatural forces? Can we only pray that wildlife will be protected by psychic forces and long-disappeared divinities? Have we so thoroughly abandoned the notion of a rational conversation about climate change and environmental policy that we can only hope for the irrational beings of myth and fantasy as a deus ex machina to intervene? This is not an eco-critical novel but an eco-escapist fantasy—which is worse than badly written.

[Nikhil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read Ghost-Eye over the course of a few weeks.
Premise: three-year-old Varsha, born into a strictly vegetarian Calcutta household, starts demanding fish and describing a mud house by a river where she and a different mother used to catch and cook it. Her family drags her to Dr. Shoma Bose, who's spent her career documenting "cases of the reincarnation type" — a real research category, apparently. Fifty years later Shoma's nephew Dinu, working with a Sunderbans conservation NGO in present-day Brooklyn, stumbles on Varsha's old case file and gets pulled backward into the whole thing.
The fish in this book is doing more work than a food motif should. Every reincarnation detail Varsha surfaces gets cross-checked against actual species, actual cooking methods, actual river geography — the realism of the fish is load-bearing for how much you're willing to believe everything else. Ghosh apparently built this off real case-study literature on children who remember eating specific meals from lives that supposedly weren't theirs, and it shows — the past-life material never tips into spectacle, it just accumulates, quiet detail on quiet detail, until the coincidences stop feeling coincidental. That restraint is the best trick in the book.
The climate thread comes in sideways through Dinu's NGO work and Varsha's own visions of flood and loss, and Ghosh — mercifully — doesn't turn it into a sermon. It reads more like: memory, ecology, and grief are the same organ in this book, and he's just pressing on it from different angles.
I didn't mind it; I went in willing to sit inside the woo woo instead of interrogating it, and the book rewards that. If you need every uncanny event resolved into something falsifiable, this'll annoy you. If you can let a coincidence just sit there being eerie, it's immersive start to finish.

[Moushumi Ghosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ghost-Eye is closer to the Calcutta Chromosome in spirit than to Shadow Lines. The plot is mesmerising connecting varied concepts from the environment to reincarnation. I know this is not everyone's cuppa tea.

Ghosh is following a long line of writers who have explored these topics in India and outside. The radicalism, if any, is in the storytelling, not the subject matter. If you go with an open mind, there are gems to be found.

[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.

[Kaitlin LaRosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bought this on a whim off a Sophie Strand recommendation and it did not disappoint! Such a cool narrative structure jumping back and forth from present day Brooklyn and the main character’s childhood memories of India through a story he writes. An excellent exploration into past lives and how these memories can help us remember land stewardship practices that can help save and restore dying ecosystems in the present

[Ravi Mahajan · Rating 4 out of 5]

nice yarn.....not as ponderous as his recent non-fiction books so this is an easy read that keeps you engrossed till the end......I rated this a four because I always bench mark this with The Calcutta Chromosome and the first book of the Ibis trilogy and they have set the bar really high....

[Saumya Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

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