Product Description

In the 1980s Amitav Ghosh moved into a converted chicken coop. It was on the roof of a house in Lataifa, a tiny village in Egypt. During the day he poured over medieval letters sent to India from Cairo by Arab merchants. In the evenings he shut out the bellowing of his fat landlord by turning up the volume of his transistor radio and wrote stories based on what he had seen in the village. The story of Khamees the Rat, the notorious impotent (already twice married); of Zaghloul the weaver determined to travel to India on a donkey; of one-eyed Mohammad, so obsessed with a girl that he spent nights kneeling outside her window to listen to the sound of her breathing; of Amm 'Taha, part-time witch, always ready to cast a spell for a little extra money; and, of course, the story of Amitav Ghosh himself, known in the village as the Indian doctor, the uncircumcised, cow-worshipping kaffir who would not convert to Islam. This book is the story of Amitav Ghosh's decade of intimacy with the village community. Mixing conversation and research, imagination and scholarship, it is also a charged, eccentric history of the special relationship between two countires, Egypt and India, through nearly ten centuries of parochialism and sympathy, bigotry and affection.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13882 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Customer Reviews

In Depth Historical Account of Egyptian Life and Jewish History and India
Amitav Ghosh is an author par excellence...The Glass House and Hungry Tide (if one sees the BBC Documentary on Ganges, it would go hand in hand with Hungry Tide):his command and portrayal in English is simply superb. Whatever prompted him to go to Egypt and write this in depth historical portrayal alongwith an interesting account of Egyptian village life ..this would surely be interesting to know...This book needed time and one needed to be attentive..its certainly not the kind of absorbing reading as with Glass Palace or Hungry Tide....but was nevertheless interesting for me to take it on a long distance flight...this would appeal to anyone interested in the connections between Jewish History, India and Egypt...there was a thriving Jewish community in Kochi and Calcutta & I am sure there will be one once again as the face of Indian economy changes...but its certainly not a book for a short bus journey...

in reply to Harri
What prompted Ghosh to write this? Well, very few people know that Amitav Ghosh is an anthropologist-- has a DPhil from Oxford University. he did fieldwork in Eqypt and wrote about Kinship....

A good modern picture of an antique culture.
The author has done an excellent job of observing village culture being impacted by the 20th century. I found it educational and absorbing reading.