Probable, Improbable, and Catastrophic Realisms in Amitav Ghosh’s Fiction

Abstract

Abstract This chapter takes up questions of form and genre in Amitav Ghosh’s key novels. It focuses on the use of realism as the chosen mode of representation in Ghosh’s many historical fictions. The chapter argues that despite the choice of realism, Ghosh, in many of his novels, has skillfully delineated the improbable in fictional worlds often governed by the laws of probability and chance. The chapter begins with a critical examination of Ghosh’s nonfictional work, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, before moving on to a discussion of The Glass Palace. The chapter then shifts to an exploration of the explicit engagement with questions of form and ecology in The Hungry Tide and the Ibis trilogy, particularly Sea of Poppies and Flood of Fire. It concludes by exploring Ghosh’s experimental novel Gun Island, which, despite its sweeping historical trajectory and the representation of contemporary crises caused by climate change, fails to provide a successful alternate mode of storytelling to represent catastrophic planetary spacetime.