◆一次抵达12世纪的埃及之旅 ◆一段跨越800年关于“边界”和“跨越”的故事 ◆想象力丰富的历史学家，写就隐藏在旅行者故事中的真实历史 ◆用英语写作最负盛名的当代印度作家，引领独特文学流派的范本 ◆一部档案式的侦探小说、一份对现代化的反思、一位人类学者的研究记录 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 【内容简介】 这是两位身处埃及的印度人的故事。一位是12世纪的奴隶，另一位是社会人类学者和作家阿米塔夫·高希——他偶然从奴隶主人的信件里发现了这名奴隶的存在。在这个生活于数百年前的陌生人身上，高希感受到了难以名状的熟悉感。于是，他决定动身前往埃及的一个小村庄，探寻这名奴隶的故事。 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 【学者、媒体推荐】 高希的处女作《在古老的土地上》不是虚构文学，而是一位“想象力丰富的历史学家”或者说一位“具有感召力的民族志学家”的作品。 ——杜赞奇，历史学家、汉学家 这本书一部分是旅行回忆录，一部分是档案式的侦探小说，一部分则是多地域的民族志。……《在古老的土地上》重返12世纪的世界，一个连接了阿拉伯人、犹太人和南亚人的世界主义时空，一个尚未被西方的五百年经济和文化扩张塑形的世界。高希为我们重塑了一个已然消失的传统：南亚和中东之间的纽带。 ——《伦敦书评》 视野之开阔令人叹服……是历史、文化调查和游记的多元体……引人入胜。 ——《纽约时报》书评 非同凡响：一本既追溯到12世纪，又触碰到我们自己时代的难题的旅行书。 ——《泰晤士报》 动人地刻画了中东历史上一段鲜为人知故事，（本书）讲述的可以是任何拥有记忆、死亡和变化的地方。 ——《洛杉矶时报》 就像最好的游记一样，这本书同样也是一段才智和历史的旅程。 ——《华盛顿时报》 引人入胜的旅行故事……围绕埃及的过去、现在及其隐喻，《在古老的土地上》刻画了众多活灵活现的人物。高希用他细致的研究和生动的描写，呈现出精彩纷呈的故事。 ——《旧金山纪事报》 高希是一位态度谦逊、善于接受、让人喜欢的旅行者……对于作为观察者的旅行作家及其当地观察对象之间的寻常权力关系，本书做出了令人耳目一新的颠覆。 ——《卫报》

《烟河 鸦片战争三部曲》是一部长篇小说。 满载契约劳工的“朱鹭”号在孟加拉湾遭到了狂风恶浪的侵袭。在飘忽不定的航船上，人们拼命挣扎，想要死里求生。这其中有因涉嫌伪造罪而沦为阶下囚的没落贵族尼尔，伪装成水手的法国孤女波莱特，以及曾以种罂粟为生，后背井离乡的寡妇迪提和她的情人卡鲁阿。 暴风雨也袭击了“安娜希塔”号，这艘由印度驶往中国广州的船上装满了鸦片，数量之多，前所未有。另一艘苗圃船“雷德鲁斯”号也未能幸免，船上的园艺师费切尔要来中国寻找无价之宝：那些并不引人注目的花卉能疗伤、可观赏，还能入药。所有这一切都汇聚于广州的番鬼城：一个动荡不安的世界里，各种文明相互碰撞，时而融合。这里犹如一个火药桶，只等那星星之火，鸦片战争便一触即发！

Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land , Ghosh examines our inability—at the level of literature, history, and politics—to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The extreme nature of today’s climate events, Ghosh asserts, make them peculiarly resistant to contemporary modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable for the novel; they are automatically consigned to other genres. In the writing of history, too, the climate crisis has sometimes led to gross simplifications; Ghosh shows that the history of the carbon economy is a tangled global story with many contradictory and counterintuitive elements. Ghosh ends by suggesting that politics, much like literature, has become a matter of personal moral reckoning rather than an arena of collective action. But to limit fiction and politics to individual moral adventure comes at a great cost. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence—a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all cultural forms. His book serves as a great writer’s summons to confront the most urgent task of our time.

“哦，生命的赐予者，请消除我们的痛苦与悲伤……” “朱鹭号”——这艘即将远航，跨越印度洋的巨大帆船。它注定命运多舛，充满喧哗与骚动，因为它远渡重洋，即将发起邪恶的鸦片战争。这艘船的乘客可谓形形色色：有印度水手、偷渡客、苦力、以及被押运的犯人。 在这样一个充满动乱和恐惧的殖民年代，命运把本地印度人和西方殖民者搅和到了一起：破产的王公尼尔，他温文尔雅，是当地最为亲英的贵族人士，却不幸被鸦片商人陷害而沦为囚徒；失贞的寡妇迪提，新婚之夜被丈夫的家人强奸，却在丈夫逝去后的火葬陪葬时被救，那个他有着黝黑大地般宽广而结实的怀抱，从此让她温暖；船上的大副扎卡尔，是个黑白混血儿，母亲是黑人奴隶，这让他身份可疑，时刻有遭到危险的可能；而他恋上的法国孤女，是田野调查学者、植物学家的后人，被暴发户收养，最终只能逃婚，以偷渡客身份登上朱鹭号。当所有这些人全都失去了家园的照拂，开始相互视为患难的兄弟，一个原本不能想象的家庭就此在颠簸的大洋上诞生，超越人与人之间的敌意、种族的差异以及隔膜的代沟。 如同史诗般宏大的冒险小说，足迹遍及恒河岸边茂盛繁密的罂粟花田、波涛怒吼的莫测海洋以及广东人头攒动的后街小巷，但它更是一副芸芸众生的全景图，把每一个流落异乡者栩栩如生地缩写在这东方殖民地的风景画中。 作者无愧为当代最伟大的小说家之一，他耐心缜密，如同蜘蛛结网般细细描摹各条人物线索，天衣无缝地将他们编织到同一条命运之轮上。爱情、阴谋、罪行、无知、贫穷、堙没的理想、无畏的勇气，人类的情感亦汹涌如同莫测的大洋。而作者以其人类学家的知识背景，真实而生动地还原了鸦片战争的大环境与小细节。

Set in Burma during the British invasion of 1885, this masterly novel by Amitav Ghosh tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her. The struggles that have made Burma, India, and Malaya the places they are today are illuminated in this wonderful novel by the writer Chitra Divakaruni calls “a master storyteller.”

At the heart of this epic saga, set just before the Opium Wars, is an old slaving-ship, The Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean, its crew a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a truly diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt Raja to a widowed villager, from an evangelical English opium trader to a mulatto American freedman. As their old family ties are washed away they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais or ship-brothers. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will span continents, races and generations. The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of China. But it is the panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, which makes Sea of Poppies so breathtakingly alive -- a masterpiece from one of the world's finest novelists.

Once upon a time, an Indian writer named Amitav Ghosh set out as an Indian slave, name unknown, who some seven hundred years before had traveled to the Middle East. The journey took him to a small village in Egypt, where medieval customs coexist with twentieth-century desires and discontents. But even as Ghosh sought to re-create the life of his Indian predecessor, he found himself immersed in those of his modern Egyptian neighbors. Combining shrewd observations with painstaking historical research, Ghosh serves up skeptics and holy men, merchants and sorcerers. Some of these figures are real, some only imagine, but 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, weaving an entrancing and intoxicating spell.