Wild Fictions: Essays on Literature, Empire, and the Environment

Join us for a conversation with the 2025 recipient of the Pak Kyongni Prize Amitav Ghosh to celebrate his newest collection of essays, writings on subjects such as literature, climate change, travel, and discoveries thread together with reflections on the spaces that we inhabit and how we occupy them. He will be in conversation with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, followed by a signing.

PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 pm.

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From the 2025 recipient of the Pak Kyongni Prize, often referred to as Korea’s Nobel Prize in Literature.

A collection of essays on themes central to Ghosh’s work: imperialism and decolonization, climate change, and the stories of ordinary people making lives amid these historical forces.

Wild Fictions brings together Amitav Ghosh’s extraordinary writings on subjects that have obsessed him over the last twenty-five years: literature and language; climate change and the environment; and human lives, travel, and discoveries. Threaded throughout the collection are his reflections on the spaces that we inhabit and how we occupy them. From the significance of the commodification of the clove to the diversity of the mangrove forests in Bengal and the radical fluidity of multilingualism, Wild Fictions is a powerful refutation of imperial violence, a fascinating exploration of the fictions we weave to absorb history, and a reminder of the importance of sensitivity and empathy.

With the combination of moral passion, intellectual curiosity, and literary elegance that defines his writing, Ghosh makes readers understand the world in new and urgent ways. Together, the pieces in Wild Fictions chart a course that allows us to heal our relationships and restore the delicate balance with the volatile landscapes to which we all belong.

Amitav Ghosh is a novelist and essayist whose many books include the acclaimed Ibis Trilogy (Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire), Gun Island, Jungle Nama: A Story of the Sundarban, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, and The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. His newest collection of nonfiction is Wild Fictions: Essays on Literature, Empire, and the Environment.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is University Professor at Columbia University. She has won the Kyoto Prize, the Padma Bhushan, the Holberg Prize, and Lifetime Distinguished Service awards from the Modern Language Association of America and the Columbia University Asian Faculty Association. She has written many books and holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Toronto, London, Rovira I Virgili, Rabindra Bharati, San Martín, St. Andrews, Chile, Vincennes Saint-Denis, Yale, Ghana-Legon; Presidency University, University of Paris-Nanterre, Babes-Bolyai University, International Center for Latin American Studies in Inclusive Education, and Oberlin College. Humanities for social justice is her obsession.

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