In an Antique Land

Packed with anecdote and exuberant detail, In an Antique Land provides magical and intimate insights into Egypt from the Crusades to Operation Desert Storm. It exposes the indistinguishable and intertwining ties that bind together India and Egypt, Hindus and Muslims and Jews.

By combining fiction, history, travel writing and anthropology, to create a single seamless work of imagination, Ghosh characteristically makes us rethink the political boundaries that divide the world and the generic boundaries that divide narratives.

‘‘ ‘An astonishing and profoundly exciting book. It is the coming together of scholarship, history and anthropology, with literature . . . intellectually thrilling, compelling.’ —Book Review

‘‘A remarkable book . . . a hybrid of history, cultural investigation and travelogue . . . Tracing the footsteps of Bomma, a 12th-century Indian slave, his Jewish master and their merchant friends, across a medieval itinerary that links the eastern Mediterranean with the western shores of India, Mr. Ghosh also offers an enchanting, subtle glimpse into ordinary life in contemporary rural Egypt, in a manner that at times rivals anything by the masters of social realism in modern Egyptian literature.’ —New York Times Book Review

‘‘Ghosh is a traveller in the physical as well as the metaphysical, a writer of formidable learning and intelligence.’ —Indian Express