Amitav Ghosh is one of the most widely known Indians writing in English today. He was born in Calcutta in 1956. He studied at St. Stephens College,
Delhi; St. Edmund Hall, Oxford; and at the Faculty of Arts, University of Alexandria. He worked for the Indian Express newspaper in
New Delhi and earned his doctorate in Oxford before he wrote his first novel. Although he was born in Calcutta in 1956, he was brought up in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iran, and India.
He is a thinking writer. His works are influenced by various kinds of thoughts. He writes articles and essays periodically for print and electronic media on various socio-political and socio-economic issues.
In an Antique Land, The Circle of Reason, The Calcutta Chromosome, and The Shadow Lines are among his famous books. The Circle of Reason won the Prix Medici Estranger, one of France's top literary awards, and The Shadow Lines won the Sahitya Akademi Award, India's most prestigious literary prize. The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for 1997 and The Glass Palace won the Grand Prize for Fiction at the Frankfurt International e-Book Awards in 2001. Presently he lives in New York and teaches at Columbia University.
