Book Review: Jungle Nama by Amitav Ghosh
1 min read
Kritika Narula reviews Amitav Ghosh’s Jungle Nama (Published by Fourth Estate, 2024) calling it all about rhymes, greed, and the jungle’s creed.
- Book: Jungle Nama: A Story of the Sundarban
- Author: Amitav Ghosh
- Publisher: Fourth Estate
Amitav Ghosh’s favourite parlour trick is bringing words to life with evocative, succinct descriptions. So, it would come as little surprise to his long-time readers that Jungle Nama, his first-ever foray into verse poetry — a retelling of the folklore of the Sundarbans — brings the geographic setting to life.
But Jungle Nama is also different from any of Ghosh’s other writings. Seen through the sieve of creative sensors, Jungle Nama is an ambitious project: taking the folklore from Bon Bibir Johuranama (the narrative of Bon Bibi’s Glory), the legend of the goddess of the Sundarbans and retelling it in verse dictated by restrictions of syllables. Then, to retain its strength in addressing critical and urgent concerns on how human greed breeding within capitalism enables bigger, damning consequences for the whole of humankind is a feat.
