Incendiary Circumstances

"An uncannily honest writer." —New York Times Book ReviewThe novelist and journalist Amitav Ghosh has offered extraordinary firsthand accounts of pivotal world events over the past twenty years. He is an essential voice in forums like The Nation, the New York Times, the New Republic, Granta, and The New Yorker, Incendiary Circumstances brings together the finest of these pieces for the first time—including many never before published in the States — in a compelling chronicle of the turmoil of our times. Incendiary Circumstances begins with Ghosh's arrival in the Andaman and Nicobar islands just days after the devastation of the 2005 tsunami. We then travel back to September 11, 2001, as Ghosh retrieves his young daughter from school, sick with the knowledge that she must witness the kind of firestorm that has been in the background of his everyday life since childhood. With a prescience born of experience, Ghosh warned...