Gun Island, the resulting novel, follows a Brooklyn-based rare books dealer as he tries to make sense of an ancient legend of the goddess of snakes, Manasa Devi. Set in Kolkata, the Sun-derbans, Los Angeles, New York and Venice, the novel engages with Ghosh’s fascination for etymology (Which blossomed in the Ibis trilogy) and how words in different languages inform our sensibility and understanding of the world. “At the heart of the story of Gun Island, there lies an etymological mystery, a derivations that points to the deep and inextricable intermeshing of cultures and civilisations over the ages. This is why etymology fascinates me: like sailors, words, too, are travellers, and tracing their journeys is like describing voying their journey is like describing voyages of adventures.” This particular adventure proceeds at a fair gallop, with a series of what appear to be unlikely coincidences linking crucial events and the lives of the main characters. Ghosh makes a case for chance, randomness, and the uncanny. “Storytellers invest a lot of ingenuity in trying to make the improbable seem probable. And if it should happen that improbable events turn out to be connected to each other, then we have the emergence of something altogether different the uncanny. And the uncanny is very much a feature of our times. To give you just one example: There is a scene in Gun Island where a museum in Los Angeles is threatened by rapidly moving wildfires. You may have read in the papers that such an event actually occurred last year, during the California wildfires, and you might think that the scene is based on a real-life event. But the truth is that I wrote that scene before it had happened — at the time it was fiction… One of the uncanniest aspects of our times is that fiction can barely keep peace with fact.” The novel explores many of Ghosh’s other recurring motifs: Irrawaddy dol-phins; the Sunderbans; and climate change. But if there is one theme that takes up residence at the heart of the novel, that becomes its propulsive engine, it is the theme of refugees and illegal migrations, of displacement and renewal. It is one of the most urgent and fraught themes of our times. “Migration and displacement have always interested me, perhaps because my father’s family was displaced by flood way back in the 19th century ,” Ghosh says. But this is migration of different kind, precipitating a crisis of a different order. Unlike Mohsin Hamid, who, in his enthralling 2017 novel. Exit, West, used magic realism to bypass having to deal with the logistical aspect of migration, Ghosh goes deep into it, and takes the reader with him. He is captivated by how such migrations happen: the planning; the middle men; the dangerous journey in inhuman conditions; and then, for some, the arrival in the promised land and an effort to take out a new living, to fashion a new life. How did he amass that wealth of detail?” Over the last couple of years, I spent a lot of time in Italy, visiting refugee camps, and interviewing recent migrants, especially those who have made the crossing from Libya to Sicily, across the Mediterranean. These inter views were revelatory… When we hear about refugee boats on the Mediterranean, we usually assume that the people on those boats are mainly Middle East-erners and Africans. But in fact large numbers of people from the Indian sub continent, mainly Bangladesh is and Pakistanis, also travel that way.” Two of the novel’s characters come in this manner from the Sunderbans to Italy. The sections in which Ghosh lays bare their traumatic journey are the most visceral and harrowing of the book. They haunt the reader as the novel hurtles towards its tumultuous conclusion. Ghosh has emerged in rude writing health from the 19th century world of opium trade. Taut and gripping, Gun Island is a parable for our times. A breathtaking vista of black volcanic mountains and black sand beaches stretches before you as you walk in-1 degree C. The black comes from the under-icekatla volcano, which has erupted from time to time for over 900 years, most recently in 1918. Horen scratched his head. There are a couple of spots down-river, he said, where fisherman go at this time of year. Tipu and I could go look for him in the bhotbhoti, if you like. I seized eagerly upon the suggestion. Yes, you should both go, I said, And what about you? Said Horen. I’ll stay here. I need sometime to look around.’