Gun Island

Amitav Ghosh 2019

Devastation Rating

Emotionally Ruined
loss literary fiction survival philosophical

Our Take

A Bengali scholar follows a legend about a gun merchant and finds himself entangled in the refugee crisis and a world becoming unrecognisable under climate pressure. Ghosh writes with the grief of someone watching two catastrophes — environmental and humanitarian — accelerating toward each other. The myth at the novel's centre refuses to stay metaphorical — Ghosh makes it breathe into the present.

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