Amitav Ghosh is one of India’s most famous writers whose work, fiction and nonfiction, challenges Western narratives of imperialism and climate change. His Ibis-trilogy about the years leading up to the Opium wars has recently been published in Swedish by Palaver Press.
In his latest nonfiction book, The Nutmeg’s Curse, Ghosh explains our planetary crisis as the culmination of events that began with the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. The story of nutmeg is Ghosh’s parable for a crisis whose political dynamics are rooted in the centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. Writing explicitly against the backdrop of the Covid pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, Ghosh frames these ongoing crises in a new way by showing how the colonialist extractive mindset is directly connected to the deep inequality we see around us today.