AMITAV GHOSH grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. He is the author of four books of non-fiction, two collections of essays and nine novels. His books have won many prizes and he holds eight honorary doctorates. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages and he has served on the jury of the Locarno and Venice film festivals. In 2018 he became the first English-language writer to receive India's highest literary honour, the Jnanpith Award. In 2024 he was awarded the Erasmus Prize and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is married to the writer Deborah Baker and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Ghosh's book is extraordinary; a travel book that reaches back into the twelth century as it touches on the dilemmas of our own time.