Ghosh's first novel,
The Circle of Reason(1986), follows the fortunes a young weaver, Alu, who is brought up in a Bengal village and, after a false accusation that he is a member of a terrorist group, subsequently flees westwards, first to a fictional Gulf state and later to Algeria. The novel suggests that weaving is a diasporic activity which transcends national origins and unites worlds that have habitually been viewed as separate; and in so doing, it anticipates Ghosh's later contention in
In An Antique Land(1992) that the medieval trade-routes functioned as a mobile inter-continental network that was largely unaware of Western Oriental/Occidental bifurcations.
Alu is indisputably the main protagonist, the glue that holds a nomadic novel together, but for much of the action he is
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Citation: Thieme, John. "The Circle of Reason". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 March 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1253, accessed 21 November 2024.]
