Ecocritical Perspectives in the Fiction of Amitav Ghosh: Climate Change, the Anthropocene, and Environmental Justice
Keywords:
Amitav Ghosh, ecocriticism, climate fiction, Anthropocene, environmental justice, postcolonial ecocriticism, non-human agency, Sundarbans.Abstract
Amitav Ghosh occupies a distinguished position in contemporary Indian English literature owing to his sustained and sophisticated engagement with ecological concerns. This paper examines the ecocritical dimensions of Ghosh's fiction, focusing on how his novels integrate history, anthropology, mythology, and environmental science to reimagine the relationship between humanity and the non-human world. Through close attention to The Hungry Tide (2004), Gun Island (2019), the Ibis Trilogy, and the influential non-fiction work The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016), the study explores Ghosh's ecological imagination, his representation of nature and non-human agency, his climate-change narratives, and his engagement with Anthropocene discourse and environmental justice. The paper argues that Ghosh challenges anthropocentric assumptions by portraying rivers, oceans, mangroves, storms, and animals as active participants in human history, while foregrounding the disproportionate vulnerability of marginalized communities to ecological degradation. Situating his work within contemporary theoretical frameworks—Deep Ecology, Environmental Humanities, Postcolonial Ecocriticism, and Anthropocene theory—the study demonstrates that Ghosh has significantly expanded the scope of Indian environmental literature and established fiction as an essential medium for cultivating ecological consciousness and advocating sustainable coexistence.
References
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Bracke, A. (2018). Climate crisis and the 21st-century British novel. Bloomsbury Academic.
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Johns-Putra, A. (2019). Climate change and the contemporary novel. Cambridge University Press.
Menely, T., & Taylor, J. O. (Eds.). (2017). Anthropocene reading: Literary history in geologic times. Pennsylvania State University Press.
Mukherjee, U. P. (2018). Final frontiers: First encounters and Amitav Ghosh's ecological imagination. Interventions, 20(3), 388–404.
Nayar, P. K. (2019). Ecoprecarity: Vulnerable lives in literature and culture. Routledge.
Nixon, R. (2011). Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Harvard University Press.
Roos, B., & Hunt, A. (2018). Postcolonial green: Environmental politics and world narratives. University of Virginia Press.
Trexler, A. (2015). Anthropocene fictions: The novel in a time of climate change. University of Virginia Press.
Vescovi, A. (2017). Voicing the unspeakable: Language and history in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide. Le Simplegadi, 15(17), 235–248.
Adamson, J., & Davis, M. (Eds.). (2017). Humanities for the environment: Integrating knowledge, forging new constellations of practice. Routledge.
Bracke, A. (2018). Climate crisis and the 21st-century British novel. Bloomsbury Academic.
Chakraborty, A. (2021). Migration, myth, and the more-than-human world in Amitav Ghosh's Gun Island. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 57(4), 512–526.
DeLoughrey, E. (2019). Allegories of the Anthropocene. Duke University Press.
Ghosh, A. (2016). The great derangement: Climate change and the unthinkable. University of Chicago Press.
Huggan, G., & Tiffin, H. (2015). Postcolonial ecocriticism: Literature, animals, environment (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Jalais, A. (2019). Forest of tigers: People, politics and environment in the Sundarbans. Routledge.
Johns-Putra, A. (2019). Climate change and the contemporary novel. Cambridge University Press.
Menely, T., & Taylor, J. O. (Eds.). (2017). Anthropocene reading: Literary history in geologic times. Pennsylvania State University Press.
Mukherjee, U. P. (2018). Final frontiers: First encounters and Amitav Ghosh's ecological imagination. Interventions, 20(3), 388–404.
Nayar, P. K. (2019). Ecoprecarity: Vulnerable lives in literature and culture. Routledge.
Nixon, R. (2011). Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Harvard University Press.
Roos, B., & Hunt, A. (2018). Postcolonial green: Environmental politics and world narratives. University of Virginia Press.
Trexler, A. (2015). Anthropocene fictions: The novel in a time of climate change. University of Virginia Press.
Vescovi, A. (2017). Voicing the unspeakable: Language and history in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide. Le Simplegadi, 15(17), 235–248.
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