The Nutmeg's Curse

What do you do when the subject matter of life on this planet seems to lack … life? Your read The Nutmeg’s Curse, which eschews the leaden language of climate expertise in favor of the re-animating powers of mythology, etymology, and cosmology. Ghosh challenges readers to reckon with war, empire, and genocide in order to fully grasp the world-devouring logics that underpin ecological collapse. We owe a great debt to his brilliant mind, avenging pen, and huge soul. Do not miss this book-and above all, do not tell yourself that you already know its contents, because you don’t. – NAOMI KLEIN, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the ClimateUrgent, beautiful and far-reaching … it should be essential reading * TLS *In this brilliant book, aflame with insight and moral power, Ghosh shows that in the history of the nutmeg lies the path to our planetary crisis, twisting through the horrors of empire and racial capitalism. The Nutmeg’s Curse brings to life alternative visions of human flourishing in consonance with the rest of nature - and reminds us how great are the vested interests that obstruct them – SUNIL AMRITH, author of Unruly WatersThe creation of a literary mind, linking historical and philosophical themes through the small details and analogies that are the fabric of every good story – Bruno Maçães * New Statesman *My climate book of the year is Amitav Ghosh’s latest, The Nutmeg’s Curse, a beautiful, harrowing historical essay about mass-mobilizing empathy as the way to undermine the centuries-old drive toward targeted extermination of entire peoples and communities out of greed for ever-more natural resources. Ghosh produced a work that reaches your brain and your heart with unforgettable analytic and moral clarity – ERIC ROSTON * Bloomberg *Diagnosing our intricately inter-linked political, economic and environmental crises, The Nutmeg’s Curse is a book like no other in its combination of moral passion, intellectual rigour and literary elegance. And from its effortless synthesis of contemporary scholarship and indigenous knowledge systems emerges an irrefutable argument-that we must rethink our fundamental assumptions about human history – PANKAJ MISHRAGhosh brings to bear his prodigious skills as both a novelist and an anthropologist, while incorporating insights from an astonishing array of other disciplines - literary criticism, environmental science, botany, history, economics, and more - the kind of omnihumanism necessary to confronting an omnicidal vision – PRIYA SATIA

Amitav Ghosh is the author of the bestselling Ibis trilogy, comprised of Sea of Poppies (short-listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize), River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire. His other novels include The Circle of Reason, which won the Prix Medicis etranger, and The Glass Palace. He is the author of many works of nonfiction, including The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable and The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. He holds two lifetime achievement awards and four honorary doctorates. In 2015, he was named as a finalist of the Man Booker International Prize. In 2018, Ghosh became the first English-language writer to receive the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honor, and in 2024 he was awarded the Laureate Erasmus Prize. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.