My Take - In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh
In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh erases the demarcating lines between the genres and presents unique blend of fiction, non-fiction, history, anthropology and travelogue. Ghosh presents two parallel narratives: one concerning himself and his time in Egypt, and the other about the twelfth century Jewish merchant Abraham Ben Yiju and his slave Bomma. But the narratives are not isolated from each other, in fact the repercussions of the historically obscured lives of Ben Yiju and his acquaintances can still be detected subtly influencing the lives of 20th century citizens of the third world countries, whose forefathers were once involved in the highly developed mercantile network of Indian Ocean trade.
In this work Ghosh painstakingly reconstructs the lives of those entities whose existences had been all but devoured by the incessant ravages of Time. History, itself is an insidious institution which can conveniently obliterate from its annals such existences and occurrences that are at odds with the worldview and ideology of those in Power. In an Antique Land explores many such issues which have been taken for granted by the 21st century readers (thanks to colonial rule) and nudges the reader to re-think the conventions for themselves.
Ghosh’s writing style is lucid and vivid which has the ability to captivate and enchant the readers. However, I felt the writing especially in the Mangalore section to be a little boring and perhaps unnecessarily digressive. Barring such few instances, I was thoroughly enamoured and enraptured by the writing style of Amitav Ghosh and want to explore more of his books. I would recommend this book to everyone who has even the slightest interest in history or anthropology. I can assure that Amitav Ghosh through his well-researched and vivid writing would compel one to dive deeper into the ocean of historical knowledge of medieval Indian Oceanic trade.
My rating - 4 ⭐
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