Gun Island, Amitav Ghosh
Gun Island, Amitav Ghosh
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Gun Island
A Novel

Author: Amitav Ghosh

Narrator: Sagar Arya

Unabridged: 10 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/10/2019

Synopsis

From the award-winning author of the bestselling epic Ibis trilogy comes a globetrotting, folkloric adventure novel about family and heritage.Bundook. Gun. A common word, but one that turns Deen Datta’s world upside down.A dealer of rare books, Deen is used to a quiet life spent indoors. But as his once-solid beliefs begin to shift, he is forced to set out on an extraordinary journey, one that takes him from India to Los Angeles and Venice via a tangled route through the memories and experiences of those he meets along the way. There is Piya, a fellow Bengali-American who sets his journey in motion; Tipu, an entrepreneurial young man who opens Deen’s eyes to the realities of growing up in today’s world; Rafi, with his desperate attempt to help someone in need; and Cinta, an old friend who provides the missing link in the story they are all a part of. It is a journey that will upend everything he thought he knew about himself, about the Bengali legends of his childhood, and about the world around him.Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island is a beautifully realized novel that effortlessly spans space and time. It is the story of a world on the brink, of increasing displacement and unstoppable transition. But it is also a story of hope, of a man whose faith in the world and the future is restored by two remarkable women.

About Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956, and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; he studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria. He is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction including The Shadow Lines, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, the Ibis Trilogy, Gun Island, The Great Derangement, The Nutmeg's Curse and Jungle Nama. Amitav Ghosh's work has been translated into more than thirty languages. His essays have appeared in the New Yorker, the New Republic and the New York Times. He has been awarded and honoured across the world for his work. In 2019 Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the past decade. The same year, the Jnanpith Award, India's highest literary honour, was conferred on him: he was the first English-language writer to receive it.

Reviews

Goodreads review by 8stitches 9lives

Gun Island is a contemporary novel worth savouring rather than devouring, and as we travel seamlessly between times and continents we are treated to an epic adventure of immense breadth and depth. Encompassing a range of themes including important and prevalent topical issues such as climate change,......more

Quotes

“With sweeping exuberant style and extraordinary linguistic facility…this important novel is an account of our current world, the one few writers have had the courage to face.” Annie Proulx, New York Times bestselling author

“A Bengali Da Vinci Code…Gun Island is a book of reckless and persuasive scope, a huge, rambunctious reckoning with our environmental declension.” Sunday Times (London)

“Tales of escapology, of deprivation and persecution, of impossible yearnings for a new world that bring us, inexorably, to the terrified refugees on the Mediterranean. Which is, perhaps, Ghosh’s essential point.” The Guardian (London)

“Amitav Ghosh…wants literature to explore the environment as much as it does other crises.” New York Times

“Flitting across continents, Ghosh deftly summons up a pungent sense of place, whether in the mangrove swamps of Bengal or the misty, cobbled streets of Venice.” The Times (London)

“Deals with two of the biggest issues of the current moment: climate change and human migration. But it’s not homework…[it’s] a good, old-fashioned diversion around these particular poles…A book unafraid of ideas can be bracing.” Washington Post

“With the melodic cadence of South Asian-accented English, Sagar Arya narrates this mystical novel…Arya provides colorful inflections for Deen and his various Asian-American friends who provide critical keys to unlocking the mystery he is pursuing.” AudioFile

“A modern retelling of a Bengali myth. He believes old legends have a lot to teach us about how to think about the catastrophic effects of climate change.” NPR

“Gun Island makes us wonder whether the warming planet can also revive premodern legends that lay buried in different cultures for extended time periods…What happens when age-old stories embedded in the permafrost of intergenerational memory suddenly thaw?” Literary Hub

Awards

  • Guardian Pick
  • Vanity Fair Magazine Pick
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