Analysing Amitav Ghosh’s <i>Gun Island</i> as a Climate Fiction: Transgressing ‘Borders’ and ‘Orders’ by the Humans and Nonhumans

Abstract

Amitav Ghosh has a tendency to write literary pieces focusing on climate issues. This aspiration is also manifested in his novel Gun Island (2019). The author allegorizes the myth of Manasa Devi, which creates a wonderful connection between humans and natural environment in this novel. Gun Island (2019) explores the conviction of diversified environmental issues, such as environmental injustice, migrant ecologies, and climate refugees. Although natural disasters occur more or less everywhere in the world, the poor pay the highest price. The harsh reality is that the most affected are the most marginalized regions of underprivileged countries. Developed countries can still cope with its effects, but people in poor countries are persistently being displaced. The Sundarbans is one such magnificent instance in Gun Island. Overall, Ghosh has shown that migration of humans and nonhumans occurs simultaneously as a result of climate change. Humans and nonhumans transgress the precincts of ‘border’ as well as ‘order’ to migrate from one place to another eco-friendly place. His perplexing story of Gun Island is inexplicably mythical but contextually practical because it resonates with a group of Asian and African people’s own experiences, emotions and their yearning for migration to Europe due to climate change. This borderless migration cannot be stopped by any means of order.