‘A fascinating and seductive writer’
  -------The Times
IN AN ANTIQUE LAND

‘An astonishing and profoundly exciting book. It is the coming together of scholarship, history and anthropology, with literature . . . intellectually thrilling, compelling.’ —Book Review


Packed with anecdote and exuberant detail, In an Antique Land provides magical and intimate insights into Egypt from the Crusades to Operation Desert Storm. It exposes the indistinguishable and intertwining ties that bind together India and Egypt, Hindus and Muslims and Jews.

By 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.

Praise for the book

‘An astonishing and profoundly exciting book. It is the coming together of scholarship, history and anthropology, with literature . . . intellectually thrilling, compelling.’ —Book Review

‘A remarkable book . . . a hybrid of history, cultural investigation and travelogue . . . Tracing the footsteps of Bomma, a 12th-century Indian slave, his Jewish master and their merchant friends, across a medieval itinerary that links the eastern Mediterranean with the western shores of India, Mr. Ghosh also offers an enchanting, subtle glimpse into ordinary life in contemporary rural Egypt, in a manner that at times rivals anything by the masters of social realism in modern Egyptian literature.’ —New York Times Book Review

‘Ghosh is a traveller in the physical as well as the metaphysical, a writer of formidable learning and intelligence.’ —Indian Express

Published by
:
Penguin Books India
Published
:
February 2008
Imprint
:
Viking/ Ravi Dayal Publisher
Special Price
:
Rs 495.00
Cover Price
:
Rs 495.00
ISBN13
:
9780670081912
Edition
:
Hardback
Format
:
Demy
Extent
:
344 pp
Classification
:
Non-fiction
Rights
:
India, Nepal and Bhutan only