Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land

John Thieme (University of East Anglia)

Ed. by John Thieme, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 10.3.1.03: Indian Writing and Culture: Post-colonial, 1947-present.
Vol. editors: Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Pavan Kumar Malreddy (J W Goethe University of Frankfurt), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1992

Places

India (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Guidebooks / Travel writing
Historical representation
Novel

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

At first sight

In An Antique Land

(1992) appears to be both generically and thematically different from Ghosh's two preceding works, the novels

The Circle of Reason

and

The Shadow Lines

. An apparently factual “history in the guise of a traveller's tale” (the sub-title of one of the editions of the text), it moves between two narratives. The more extensive is ostensibly a travel-book, in which a Ghosh persona, engaged in anthropological research in Egypt, describes his experiences living in a fellaheen village. In the shorter narrative, a version of which has also been published in

Subaltern Studies

as “The Slave of MS. H. 6”, the persona pursues the fugitive traces of the “slave” of a twelfth-century Jewish merchant – in Egypt, the Malabar coast of India, the U.K. and…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1372 words

Citation: Thieme, John. "In an Antique Land". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 March 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4512, accessed 19 April 2024.]

Save this article