Amitav Ghosh awarded the 2024 Erasmus Prize for ‘imagining the unthinkable’ in his writings

The Praemium Erasmianum Foundation has awarded Amitav Ghosh the 2024 Erasmus Prize. He received the prize for his contribution to the theme “imagining the unthinkable” and for addressing the issue of climate change in his writings. The award committee also lauded his attempts to show that “the climate crisis is a cultural crisis that results from a dearth of the imagination”.

Born in Kolkata in 1956, Ghosh studied social anthropology at Oxford. He has produced a vast body of work, made up of both historical novels and journalistic essays with each work grounded in thorough archival. Ghosh writes about migration, diaspora, and cultural identity in both his novels and nonfiction essays.

Nature is an important character in his novel The Hungry Tide. Ghosh describes how the effects of natural catastrophes have been inextricably linked with human destiny for a very long time. In his compelling Ibis trilogy, set against the backdrop of poppy cultivation and opium wars, he shows how colonialism has left equally deep scars on the Indian subcontinent.

In his nonfiction book The Nutmeg’s Curse, he traces the climate crisis back to a disastrous vision that reduces the earth to a mere source of raw materials. In his long essay The Great Derangement, he challenges readers to view climate change through the...

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