Amitav Ghosh is an Indian writer and the author of several acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction including the Booker-shortlisted Sea of Poppies (John Murray, 2009), the first novel in his Ibis trilogy, The Glass Palace (Penguin Books India, 2008), and The Hungry Tide (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005). His non-fiction writing includes The Great Derangement (University of Chicago Press, 2016), The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis (John Murray, 2021), and Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories (Picador, 2025), which was shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize. Born in Calcutta and raised in India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, Amitav’s writing has been translated into more than thirty languages. He was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize and was the first English-language writer to receive the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honour. In 2024, Amitav was awarded the Erasmus Prize.