For more than 30 years, the Indian-born writer Amitav Ghosh has built a global following with novels that draw on deep historical research. 

But his latest offering, Ghost-Eye, is more esoteric. The plot moves back and forth between India and the US, using past lives to explore the ties between the personal and the political.

The plot centers on a psychiatrist treating a 3-year-old who shocks her family by insisting she remembers a past life in a fishing community.

In this conversation with Mishal Husain, Ghosh explains why he’s finding it harder to write nowadays, how the memories of his childhood came flooding back during the Covid pandemic, why he sees capitalism as an obstacle to protecting the environment and thinks India has lost its way diplomatically. 

Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend: www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview

03:37 - “She had a near-death experience”
05:37 - Reincarnated past lives
08:05 - “The world has lost all its wonder”
08:28 - Growing up in Kolkata
10:56 - Kolkata and New York are the “opposite ends of the telescope”
11:44 - “I really learned to think against the grain”
12:13 - Creating a “bubble of tranquility” to write
12:32 - Writing from “within the crisis”
14:45 - India has lost its way diplomatically
16:25 - Watching Zohran Mamdani grow up
19:12 - India and China
23:11 - Writing a story to be read in 100 years
27:31 - Writing books by hand 

Contact The Mishal Husain Show mishalshow@bloomberg.net

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