photo: Ivo van der Bent 01-22-2019 Amitav Ghosh is in Indiaas schrijver die schrijft in het Engels. Een eerste kennismaking met Amitav Ghosh’ werk roept bij zowat alle lezers herinneringen op aan Salman Rushdie. Bij het ambassade hotel in Amsterdam
The University of Siena will award an honorary degree in Modern Literature to Amitav Ghosh
L’University of Siena will confer an honorary degree in Modern Literature to Amitav Ghoshthe most interesting and representative English-speaking Indian writer of our time.
The award ceremony will take place on Thursday 4 July at the Rectorate of the University of Siena, opened by greetings from the Rector Roberto Di Pietra and the Director of the Department of Philology and criticism of ancient and modern literatures, Pierluigi Pellini, followed by the Laudatio pronounced by Professor Elena Spandri, professor of English literature at the University of Siena. Immediately afterwards, Amitav Ghosh will give a Lectio Magistralis entitled “Intimations of Apocalypse: Catastrophist and Gradualist Imaginings of the Planetary Future”.
On Monday 1 July, at the Santa Chiara Lab, Amitav Ghosh will meet the academic community of Siena as part of the symposium on “The writer and the world: knowing beyond borders. A dialogue with Amitav Ghosh”.
“We are honored and pleased to welcome Professor Amitav Ghosh to our community for the awarding of an honorary degree in Modern Literature – commented the Rector Roberto Di Pietra – and for this I thank the Department of Philology and Criticism of Ancient and Modern Literatures (DFCLAM), Department of Excellence since 2018, which has strongly supported the initiative. Ghosh is one of the most authoritative voices in world literature and her works are fundamental for understanding complex historical and cultural dynamics with which we are and will be increasingly called upon to deal. Her work offers a lucid look at crucial issues, from imperialism to decolonization, from the impacts of climate change to migration. All themes that are of great relevance for an institution like ours committed to the challenges of sustainability, integration and inclusion”.
Amitav Ghosh, after graduating in History at the University of Delhi, he obtained a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at Oxford, traveling to Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt. Starting from the 1980s, you have interpreted the great phenomena of contemporary life – imperialism, decolonisation, diasporas, the digital revolution, climate change – in works of great literary and scientific interest. From the novel on the intergenerational memory of the Partition between India and Pakistan, which launched him on the international scene (The Shadow Lines, 1988), to the historical epic on the opium wars, told in the “Ibis Trilogy” (2008 -2015) and in the recent essay Smoke and Ashes. Opium’s Hidden Histories (2024), Ghosh has made literature an important space for historiographical reflection and cultural debate. Since the novel Il Paese delle Mare (2005), his research has been directed towards an environmentalist aesthetic which makes his work of particular interest for a university involved in sustainability policies such as the University of Siena. A writer translated into more than thirty languages, Amitav Ghosh won the “Jnanpith” Prize in 2018, the highest Indian literary award. He currently lives between New York and Kolkata.
Source: Communication and press – University of Siena
