Description

In an Antique Land is the story of two Indians in Egypt: Bomma, a slave brought there by his Jewish master who came to India in the twelfth century, and Amitav Ghosh, who finds himself tracing Bomma’s story in 1980. Interspersing his quest with accounts of his stay in ‘Masr’ and the people he met, Ghosh weaves together a narrative packed with exuberant detail, exposing ties that have bound together India and Egypt, and Hindus and Muslims and Jews, from the Crusades to Operation Desert Storm. Combining fiction, history, travel writing and anthropology, to create a single seamless work of imagination, Ghosh characteristically makes us rethink the political boundaries that divide the world and the generic boundaries that divide narratives.Show more