River of Smoke

The Indian-born English writer Amitav Ghosh’s work mostly constitutes historical situations, specifically Indian at that. He is from West Bengal. His debut novel was The Circle of Reason, and he has ever since been a prolific writer. Born in July 1956, Ghosh studied in some of the most reputed educational institutes of India. He later acquired a D.Phil. from St. Edmund Hall in social anthropology. He was also a professor and taught at Queens College, City University of New York, and Harvard. For his outstanding contributions to literature, Amitav Ghosh has been awarded the Padma Shri award by the Indian government in the year 2007. He has also won the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Dan David Prize, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and was nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2008 for his book Sea of Poppies. Some of his other notable works are The Shadow Lines, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, and The Hungry Tide.