Deen Datta, a middle-aged Bengali dealer in rare books who divides his time between Brooklyn and Calcutta, hears on a visit home about a shrine in the Sundarbans tied to the legend of the Gun Merchant, a trader who tried to escape the wrath of Manasa Devi, goddess of snakes. A skeptic by temperament, he agrees to visit, and an unsettling encounter there starts a chain of coincidences.
His search takes him to wildfire-threatened Los Angeles and to Venice, where Bangladeshi migrants work in the tourist trade. Along the way he meets Piya Roy from The Hungry Tide, a young Sundarbans boy named Tipu, a Venetian historian called Cinta, and a migrant named Rafi, and he begins to see the old myth as an account of displacement driven by a changing climate.
The novel deliberately strains realism, turning to the uncanny to talk about a world where extreme weather seems to follow its own plot. It complements Ghosh's nonfiction book The Great Derangement, which argued that fiction has largely failed to confront climate change. Its mix of travelogue and parable may frustrate readers who want tight realism.
Book details
| Author | Amitav Ghosh |
|---|---|
| First published | 2019 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 312 |
| Setting | Calcutta, the Sundarbans, Los Angeles and Venice, late 2010s |
Themes
- Climate change
- Migration
- Myth and modernity
- Coincidence
- Human trafficking
Who should read it
Readers looking for climate fiction that blends folklore, travel and the refugee crisis.