Rashtrapati Bhavan to host Shri Amitav Ghosh as Writer In-Residence

Rashtrapati Bhavan to host Shri Amitav Ghosh as Writer In-Residence

Eminent author Shri Amitav Ghosh will stay in Rashtrapati Bhavan as Writer In-Residence from July 10 to 14, 2016. He will be accompanied by his wife, Mrs. Deborah Baker.    

Shri Amitav Ghosh is award-winning author and essayist whose books include:- The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide and The Ibis Trilogy: Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire.

The ‘In-Residence’ programme in Rashtrapati Bhavan was launched by the President of India on December 11, 2013 with the aim of providing writers and artists an opportunity to stay in Rashtrapati Bhavan and be a part of the life of Rashtrapati Bhavan.  The Programme seeks to provide an environment which will inspire creative thinking and rejuvenate artistic impulses. It is intended to honour and recognize eminent and established artists and writers as well as young upcoming talent from different parts of the country.  The first person to stay in Rashtrapati Bhavan as part of the programme was eminent artist and Member of Parliament, Shri Jogen Choudhury.  Invitations to live in-Residence have been also extended to Sculptor Shri Subodh Gupta and Artist Shri Paresh Maity. 

The ‘In-Residence’ programme now includes grass root innovators, artists, writers, inspired teachers from Central Universities, award-winning school teachers from different States and scholars from IITs, IISERs, IISc-B and NITs.

Around 140 persons have been part of these ‘In-Residence’ programmes till date. 

His latest book ‘The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable’ is being released in Delhi on July 12, 2016.

A brief profile of Shri Ghosh is attached. 

Amitav Ghosh was born in Kolkata and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri

Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The

Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in

Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide and

The Ibis Trilogy consisting of the novels Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke

(2011) and Flood of Fire (2015). His most recent book is a work of non-fiction,

The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (forthcoming

July 12, 2016).

The Circle of Reason was awarded France’s Prix Médicis in 1990, and The

Shadow Lines won two presitigious Indian prizes the same year, the Sahitya

Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar. The Calcutta Chromosome won the

Arthur C. Clarke award for 1997 and The Glass Palace won the International eBook

Award at the Frankfurt book fair in 2001. In 2005 The Hungry Tide won

the Crossword Book Prize, and in 2008 Sea of Poppies was shortlisted for the

Man Booker Prize, and was awarded the Crossword Book Prize and the

IndiaPlaza Golden Quill Award.

Amitav Ghosh’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages and

he has served on the Jury of the Locarno Film Festival (Switzerland) and the

Venice Film Festival (2001). Amitav Ghosh’s essays have been published in The

New Yorker, The New Republic and The New York Times. His essays have been

published by Penguin India (The Imam and the Indian) and Houghton Mifflin 

USA (Incendiary Circumstances). He has taught in many universities in India

and the USA, including Delhi University, Columbia, Queens College and

Harvard. In January 2007 he was given the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest

honours, by the President of India. In 2010, Amitav Ghosh was awarded

honorary doctorates by Queens College, New York, and the Sorbonne, Paris.

Along with Margaret Atwood, he was also a joint winner of a Dan David Award

for 2010. In 2011 he was awarded the Blue Metropolis Prize in Montreal.