Named a most anticipated book of 2026 by Esquire | Literary Hub
"Ghost-Eye is a marvel that will ignite a reader's sense of wonder—a masterful novel, at once simple and capacious." —Rabih Alameddine, National Book Award–winning author of The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)
Past and present collide in a novel about a girl who might just be a "case of the reincarnation type."
Varsha Gupta wants fish for lunch. Her family is shocked; the three-year-old has never tasted fish in her life. The Guptas are strict vegetarians and don’t allow it inside their Calcutta mansion. But Varsha claims she can remember another life, in a mud house by a river where she caught and cooked fish with a different mother.
Perplexed, the Guptas turn to Dr. Shoma Bose, a psychologist who has been investigating what are known as "cases of the reincarnation type" for years. But her understanding of the world is changed forever by Varsha's revelations.
Half a century later, Varsha's case file catches the attention of a group of environmental activists, and Shoma's nephew Dinu is drawn inexorably into their plans. As Dinu finds himself caught up in the search for Varsha, buried memories of his own past begin to surface.
Traveling between late 1960s Calcutta and present-day Brooklyn, Amitav Ghosh's Ghost-Eye is an urgent and expansive novel from one of our greatest living storytellers, about family, fate, and our fragile planet.
Genre: Literary Fiction
"Ghost-Eye is a marvel that will ignite a reader's sense of wonder—a masterful novel, at once simple and capacious." —Rabih Alameddine, National Book Award–winning author of The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)
Past and present collide in a novel about a girl who might just be a "case of the reincarnation type."
Varsha Gupta wants fish for lunch. Her family is shocked; the three-year-old has never tasted fish in her life. The Guptas are strict vegetarians and don’t allow it inside their Calcutta mansion. But Varsha claims she can remember another life, in a mud house by a river where she caught and cooked fish with a different mother.
Perplexed, the Guptas turn to Dr. Shoma Bose, a psychologist who has been investigating what are known as "cases of the reincarnation type" for years. But her understanding of the world is changed forever by Varsha's revelations.
Half a century later, Varsha's case file catches the attention of a group of environmental activists, and Shoma's nephew Dinu is drawn inexorably into their plans. As Dinu finds himself caught up in the search for Varsha, buried memories of his own past begin to surface.
Traveling between late 1960s Calcutta and present-day Brooklyn, Amitav Ghosh's Ghost-Eye is an urgent and expansive novel from one of our greatest living storytellers, about family, fate, and our fragile planet.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Ghost-Eye is a marvel that will ignite a reader's sense of wonder-a masterful novel, at once simple and capacious. Ghosh is one of our finest writers." - Rabih Alameddine
"Ghost-Eye is a brilliant return to Ghosh's speculative vein, haunting and liberating as it confronts hierarchies ancient and modern." - Siddhartha Deb
"Ghost-Eye is a well-executed story by one of the greatest novelists of our time. I was most excited to read it." - Nuruddin Farah
"Amitav Ghosh's intellectual panache and serene mastery of form make him one of the last great practitioners of the novel of ideas. Ghost-Eye is the most captivating expression yet of an imagination unfettered by the protocols of the liberal-humanist novel: a novel that explores the very real, if still oddly underexplored, world of the spirit that hundreds of millions of people inhabit simultaneously with its material counterpart." - Pankaj Mishra
"Amitav Ghosh has done more than any novelist to reimagine the role of fiction in our age of environmental emergency. In Ghost-Eye, he draws the reader from the world we know into a shadow realm of reincarnation and levitation, of talking trees and whispering spirits. Mournful and exhilarating, Ghost-Eye insists that, as its narrator says, 'In order to save the world, we have to remind ourselves of the old ways." - Nathaniel Rich
"Ghost-Eye is a brilliant return to Ghosh's speculative vein, haunting and liberating as it confronts hierarchies ancient and modern." - Siddhartha Deb
"Ghost-Eye is a well-executed story by one of the greatest novelists of our time. I was most excited to read it." - Nuruddin Farah
"Amitav Ghosh's intellectual panache and serene mastery of form make him one of the last great practitioners of the novel of ideas. Ghost-Eye is the most captivating expression yet of an imagination unfettered by the protocols of the liberal-humanist novel: a novel that explores the very real, if still oddly underexplored, world of the spirit that hundreds of millions of people inhabit simultaneously with its material counterpart." - Pankaj Mishra
"Amitav Ghosh has done more than any novelist to reimagine the role of fiction in our age of environmental emergency. In Ghost-Eye, he draws the reader from the world we know into a shadow realm of reincarnation and levitation, of talking trees and whispering spirits. Mournful and exhilarating, Ghost-Eye insists that, as its narrator says, 'In order to save the world, we have to remind ourselves of the old ways." - Nathaniel Rich
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