In an Antique Land
History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale

I would rate this book as perhaps the most important book I have read in my life. Top five or 10 at least. Not least because it creates a new genre -- we have yet to give it a name. But most importantly it struggles to arrive at how "temporal displacement" is not merely some theoretical device inven......more

'In an Antique Land` is a remarkable book. I would say it is one of the best books by Ghosh. It is a story of Ghosh's research that takes him from England to various obscure places in Egypt. So what we see in the book is how he navigates these places, whom he meets, what sort of conversations he has......more

Could my (or your) life be reconstructed 700 or 800 years after my (your) death? What would remain that would allow a scholar or anthropologist to know of my existence, what I did for a living, where I lived, how I fit in with my community, who I married? Will the ways that we store data today be re......more

I bought In An Antique Land from a small bookshop in Mussoorie, a lovely town in Northern India. I read it while travelling in Northern India Dec 2012-Jan 2013. I love this magical book. The story is like nothing I've read before. A mix of antiquity, the interaction of several faiths and contemporar......more

In the early 1980s Amitav Ghosh was living in rural Egypt, engaged in field world for his social anthropology doctorate. In this book Ghosh plaits together three different stories: that of his time living in two Egyptian villages, his return to the villages eight years later and the life of 12th cen......more