Abstract: Most of the novels written after the publication of Midnight’s Children deals with the aspect which focuses on national history cutting across personal narratives. Most of the writers are deracinated from their roots: familial, cultural, national, religious and linguistics and therefore use polyphonic form to explore their past. It comes as no surprise to find that Amitav Ghosh is a writer concerned with India’s place in larger international cultural networks, whose fiction seems directly informed by contemporary academic debates about colonialism and cultural identities and also throws light on the past and unfolds its vividness. The Calcutta Chromosome is also concerned with the relationship between science, history and colonialism
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Stephanians to respond with gusto to the challenge of Midnight’s Children. Ghosh follows Rushdie to a large extent in his technique and vision, but is also different from the latter in the sense that he does not see the present in the mirror of the past. On the contrary, the present seems to throw light on the past and unfolds its vividness. In his first novel, The Circle of Reason, (1986) published in 1986,very much written in Rushdie’s magical realist mode, attempts to recover a continuing tradition of cultural exchange for India westwards across the Indian ocean to the Gulf states and Egypt. The Shadow Lines, (1988) his second novel is a major addition to the Indian novel in English, which deals with relations between the different arms of a prospering brahmin family, the Datta Chaudhuris, displaced from Dhaka to Calcutta by the Partition. In an Antique Land, (1992) a travelogue with historical reflection in a text which challenges the privilege of the academic anthropologist’s ‘scientific’ gaze. The Calcutta Chromosome (1996) is also concerned with the relationship between science, history and colonialism in a futuristic detective story. The novel is fantastic tale of quest and discovery that intermingles the past, present and the future. Countdown, (1999) is a deeply psychological novel, revealing the attitude that leads to extreme animosity, abhorrence and suspicion between two countries India and Pakistan. In this novel Ghosh beautifully presents the terrible, shocking and discouraging dislike which is procreated by nuclear
Stephanians to respond with gusto to the challenge of Midnight’s Children. Ghosh follows Rushdie to a large extent in his technique and vision, but is also different from the latter in the sense that he does not see the present in the mirror of the past. On the contrary, the present seems to throw light on the past and unfolds its vividness. In his first novel, The Circle of Reason, (1986) published in 1986,very much written in Rushdie’s magical realist mode, attempts to recover a continuing tradition of cultural exchange for India westwards across the Indian ocean to the Gulf states and Egypt. The Shadow Lines, (1988) his second novel is a major addition to the Indian novel in English, which deals with relations between the different arms of a prospering brahmin family, the Datta Chaudhuris, displaced from Dhaka to Calcutta by the Partition. In an Antique Land, (1992) a travelogue with historical reflection in a text which challenges the privilege of the academic anthropologist’s ‘scientific’ gaze. The Calcutta Chromosome (1996) is also concerned with the relationship between science, history and colonialism in a futuristic detective story. The novel is fantastic tale of quest and discovery that intermingles the past, present and the future. Countdown, (1999) is a deeply psychological novel, revealing the attitude that leads to extreme animosity, abhorrence and suspicion between two countries India and Pakistan. In this novel Ghosh beautifully presents the terrible, shocking and discouraging dislike which is procreated by nuclear