What if everything you see is only part of the story?
One of the world’s most celebrated literary voices, Amitav Ghosh, returns to fiction with Ghost-Eye, a haunting, expansive novel that moves seamlessly between memory and mystery, science and belief, past lives and present realities. Published by Fourth Estate (HarperCollins India), Ghost-Eye releases in India today, 15 December 2025, ahead of its UK and US publication in 2026.
Launching first for Indian readers, *Ghost-Eye* reinforces Ghosh’s enduring relationship with the subcontinent as both setting and sensibility, while addressing questions that are unmistakably global and urgently contemporary.
A Story That Begins With a Child — and a Memory That Shouldn’t Exist
At the heart of Ghost-Eye is a quietly unsettling question: Can memory survive death?
Three-year-old Varsha Gupta asks for fish for lunch — an impossible request in her strictly vegetarian, upper-caste Calcutta household. What follows is even more extraordinary. Varsha insists she remembers another life: a mud house by a river, a different mother, and days spent catching and cooking fish.
Confounded and disturbed, her family turns to Dr Shoma Bose, a psychiatrist who has long been studying what are termed “cases of the reincarnation type.” But Varsha’s revelations challenge not just medical explanations, but Shoma’s own understanding of reality.
From Calcutta to Brooklyn, Across Time and Memory
Half a century later, Varsha’s forgotten case file resurfaces, drawing the attention of environmental activists. This discovery pulls Dinu, Shoma’s nephew, into an unfolding search that reconnects him with Varsha — and with buried truths from his own past.
Moving between late-1960s Calcutta and present-day Brooklyn, Ghost-Eye becomes a richly layered narrative about family, fate, ecological loss, rebirth, and the porous boundaries between science and belief. As with much of Amitav Ghosh’s work, the personal and planetary are deeply intertwined.
Amitav Ghosh on Ghost-Eye
Speaking about the release, Amitav Ghosh said:
“I am hugely excited about the publication of Ghost-Eye and am very much looking forward to my Indian book tour with the HarperCollins India team, starting in New Delhi on January 5.”
Amitav Ghosh India Tour — January 2026
To celebrate the release of Ghost-Eye, Amitav Ghosh will tour India in January 2026, with public conversations, readings, and book signings planned across Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, and Kolkata. Further details are expected to be announced soon.
A Literary Career That Continues to Shape Global Thought
Born in Calcutta and shaped by experiences across South Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, Amitav Ghosh is the author of some of the most influential works in contemporary literature. His novels and non-fiction — including The Shadow Lines, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, Ibis Trilogy, Gun Island, The Nutmeg’s Curse, and Smoke and Ashes — have been translated into over thirty languages.
Awarded the Jnanpith Award in 2019, the Erasmus Prize in 2024, and the Pak Kyongni Prize in 2025, Ghosh has consistently expanded the boundaries of literary fiction to include climate change, colonial histories, and the moral crises of our time.
Why Ghost-Eye Matters
With Ghost-Eye, Amitav Ghosh once again proves why he remains one of the most vital literary voices of our era. Blending psychological inquiry, spiritual mystery, and environmental urgency, the novel invites readers to reconsider what we inherit — not just through blood or memory, but through the planet itself.
For readers of serious literary fiction, Ghost-Eye is not just a new novel — it is an experience that lingers, unsettles, and resonates long after the final page.
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