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In an Antique Land

History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale

Part of Vintage Departures

Author Amitav Ghosh
Paperback
$20.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
On sale Mar 29, 1994 | 400 Pages | 9780679727835
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Combining shrewd observations with painstaking historical research from his journey to a small village in Egypt, Ghosh serves up skeptics and holy men, merchants and sorcerers. Some imagined, some real, all emerge as vividly as the characters in a great novel. In An Antique Land is an inspired work that transcends genres as deftly as it does eras.



"A remarkable book...a hybrid of history, cultural investigation and travelogue...Tracing the foosteps of Bomma, a 12th-century Indian slave, his Jewish master and their merchant friends, across a medieval itinerary that links the eastern Mediterranean with the western shores of India, Mr. Ghosh also offers an enchanting, subtle glimpse into ordinary life in contemporary rural Egypt, in a manner that at times rivals anything by the masters of social realism in modern Egyptian literature."--The New York Times Book Review
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and spent his childhood in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and northern India. He studied in Delhi and Egypt and at Oxford and taught at various Indian and American universities. The author of five non-fiction books and eight acclaimed novels, Ghosh has also written for Granta, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Observer. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children. His titles Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire received critical acclaim.  View titles by Amitav Ghosh

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Combining shrewd observations with painstaking historical research from his journey to a small village in Egypt, Ghosh serves up skeptics and holy men, merchants and sorcerers. Some imagined, some real, all emerge as vividly as the characters in a great novel. In An Antique Land is an inspired work that transcends genres as deftly as it does eras.



"A remarkable book...a hybrid of history, cultural investigation and travelogue...Tracing the foosteps of Bomma, a 12th-century Indian slave, his Jewish master and their merchant friends, across a medieval itinerary that links the eastern Mediterranean with the western shores of India, Mr. Ghosh also offers an enchanting, subtle glimpse into ordinary life in contemporary rural Egypt, in a manner that at times rivals anything by the masters of social realism in modern Egyptian literature."--The New York Times Book Review

Author

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and spent his childhood in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and northern India. He studied in Delhi and Egypt and at Oxford and taught at various Indian and American universities. The author of five non-fiction books and eight acclaimed novels, Ghosh has also written for Granta, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Observer. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children. His titles Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire received critical acclaim.  View titles by Amitav Ghosh

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