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Amitav Ghosh receives the Erasmus Prize 2024
"I am delighted and hugely honored!" Ghosh wrote on X
Amitav Ghosh / Image: Wikipedia
India-born New York-based writer Amitav Ghosh has been awarded the Erasmus Prize 2024 by the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation, a Dutch cultural institution.
As part of the award, Ghosh will get US $163,947 (€150,000), which will be presented in the autumn of 2024. "I am delighted and hugely honored!" the writer wrote on X.
So this just happened... needless to say, I am delighted and hugely honored! It's an incredible privilege to follow in the footsteps of legends like @Trevornoah, A.S. Byatt and Barbara Ehrenreich. More here: https://t.co/NIxzxQbqcy pic.twitter.com/4eIQJfz2Jq
— Amitav Ghosh (@GhoshAmitav) March 7, 2024
Ghosh was recognised for his contribution to the theme ‘imagining the unthinkable’ and highlighting the global crisis of climate change through his work.
“Ghosh has delved deeply into the question of how to do justice to this existential threat that defies our imagination. His work offers a remedy by making an uncertain future palpable through compelling stories about the past,” the Foundation said in a statement.
It noted that in his book ‘The Hungry Tide’ Ghosh witnessed how climate change and rising sea levels were ravaging the Sundarbans, a mangrove forest in India. In his non-fiction book The Nutmeg’s Curse, he traces the current planetary crisis back to a disastrous vision that reduces the earth to raw material, soulless and mechanical.
The foundation also cited Ghosh's essay ‘The Great Derangement’ which challenges readers to view climate change through the geopolitical context of war and trade.
Born in Kolkata in 1956, Ghosh studied social anthropology at Oxford University. He has produced various historical novels and journalistic essays on themes such as migration, diaspora, and cultural identity without losing sight of the human dimension.
The writer is also a recipient of the Padma Shri award from the Government of India in 2007. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009 and was named a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow in 2015.
In 2018, Ghosh received the Jnanpith Award, the highest literary prize in India. In 2019, he received an honorary doctorate from Maastricht University and was ranked by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the most important global thinkers.
His debut novel ‘The Circle of Reason’ was released in 1986. His other fictional works include ‘The Shadow Lines,’ ‘The Calcutta Chromosome,’ ‘The Glass Palace,’ and ‘Gun Island,’ while non-fictionals include ‘In an Antique Land,’ ‘Dancing in Cambodia and at Large in Burma,’ ‘Countdown,’ and ‘The Imam and the Indian.’
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