Sea of Poppies (Ghosh) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1956
• Where—Kolkata, India
• Education—St. Stephen's College, Deli; Delhi University;
   Ph.D., Oxford University.
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives in New York City; Kolkata and Goa, India

Amitv Ghosh is the internationally bestselling author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Glass Palace, and is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes. Ghosh divides his time between Kolkata and Goa, India, and Brooklyn, New York. (From the publisher.)

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Ghosh was born in Kolkata (Calcutta) and was educated at The Doon School; St. Stephen's College, Delhi; Delhi University; and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in social anthropology.

Ghosh lives in New York with his wife, Deborah Baker, author of the Laura Riding biography In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding (1993) and a senior editor at Little, Brown and Company. They have two children, Lila and Nayan.

He has been a Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. In 1999, Ghosh joined the faculty at Queens College, City University of New York as Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature. He has also been a visiting professor to the English department of Harvard University since 2005. Ghosh has recently purchased a property in Goa and is returning to India.

Sea of Poppies (2008), the first installment of a planned trilogy, is an epic saga, set just before the Opium Wars, which encapsulates the colonial history of the East. The second in the trilogy, River of Smoke, was published in 2011.

His previous novels are The Circle of Reason (1986), The Shadow Lines (1990),  In an Antique Land (1992), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma (1998),  Countdown (1999), The Glass Palace (2000) and The Hungry Tide (2004). Ghosh's fiction is characterised by strong themes that may be somewhat identified with postcolonialism but could be labelled as historical novels. His topics are unique and personal; some of his appeal lies in his ability to weave "Indo-nostalgic" elements into more serious themes.

In addition to his novels, Ghosh has written The Imam and the Indian (2002), a large collection of essays on different themes such as fundamentalism, history of the novel, Egyptian culture, and literature).

In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government.

Amitav Ghosh's literary awards include:

• Prix Medicis Etranger (French; for Circle of Reason)
• Sahitya Akademic and Ananda Pursaskar Awards (Indian;
  for The Shadow Lines)
• Arthur C. Clarke Award (UK; for The Calcutta Chromosome)
• Grand Prize-Fiction, Frankfurt International e-Book Awards
  (for The Glass Palace)
• Hutch Crossword Book Prize (Indian; for The Hungry Tide)
• Grinzane Cavour Prize (Italian)
• Shortlisted for Man Booker (UK; for Sea of Poppies)
(Author bio from Wikipedia.)