Ghost-Eye: A Novel
AMITAV GHOSH
Calcutta, September 1969
Varsha Gupta wants fish for her lunch. Her family can't understand it; the three-year-old has never tasted fish in her life. The Guptas are strict vegetarians and don't allow it inside their Calcutta mansion. But Varsha claims she can remember another life, a mud house by a river where she caught and cooked fish with a different mother.
Perplexed, the Guptas turn to Dr. Shoma Bose, a psychiatrist who has been investigating what are known as 'cases of the reincarnation type' for years. But her understanding of the world is changed forever by Varsha's revelations.
Half a century later, Varsha's therapeutic case file catches the attention of a group of environmental activists, and Shoma's nephew Dinu is drawn inexorably into their plans. And as Dinu finds himself caught up in the search for Varsha, buried memories of his own past begin to surface.
Travelling between late-sixties Calcutta and present-day Brooklyn, Ghost-Eye is an urgent and expansive novel about family, fate and our fragile planet.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AMITAV GHOSH grew up in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Iran, and his work – both fiction and non-fiction – reflects his fascination with realms touched by the Indian Ocean. His work is distinguished by his mastery of complex narratives and an amplitude and pacing that recalls the great Victorian novels.
Amitav Ghosh’s novel Sea of Poppies was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2008. He was also shortlisted, for his entire body of work, for the Man Booker International Prize 2015. He holds two lifetime achievement awards and four honorary doctorates. In 2018, Ghosh became the first English-language writer to receive the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honour, and in 2024, he was awarded the Laureate Erasmus Prize. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
PRAISE
“This shape-shifting, time-stitching novel grants us special kinds of double-vision: across eras and between species. Under its spell, Amitav Ghosh helps us begin to live multiple lives - to become aware of the porosity and mystery of being, rather than of its fortifications and frontiers.”
— Robert Macfarlane
“Amitav Ghosh’s intellectual panache and serene mastery of form make him one of the last great practitioners of the novel of ideas. Captivating.”
— Pankaj Mishra
MORE INFORMATION
Imprint: Fourth Estate
Published: 2026
ISBN: 978-93-7307-343-9
Format: Hardback
Pages: 325