Paromita Sengupta reviews Ghost-Eye by Amitav Ghosh (Harper Collins, 2025) and observes memory, myth, and the limits of reason in this novel.
Amitav Ghosh is an internationally acclaimed author whose work has long traversed the fertile intersections of history, ecology, migration, and colonial memory. A former teacher at the University of Delhi, Columbia University, and Harvard University, he is the recipient of numerous honours, including the Jnanpith Award and the Erasmus Prize. His writing is distinguished by its intellectual rigour and its ability to transform meticulous research into richly textured narrative worlds.
In Ghost-Eye, Ghosh extends his long-standing preoccupation with how the past inhabits the present, while moving more decisively into the realm of the metaphysical.
The novel opens with an arresting premise: three-year-old Varsha Gupta, born into a wealthy vegetarian Marwari family in Calcutta, begins to demand fish and recount memories of another life—one lived in a mud house by a river. What begins as a familial disturbance gradually unfolds into a layered inquiry into memory, identity, and the porous boundaries between lives.
This unsettling case draws the attention of Dr. Shoma Bose, a child psychiatrist researching ‘cases of the reincarnation type’—and the narrator, Dinu’s Mashi (aunt). This familial proximity gives the investigation an added emotional charge, quietly dissolving the distance between observer and subject. As Shoma begins to document and interpret Varsha’s memories, the narrative gathers density, linking the child’s recollections to histories of displacement, ecological precarity, and the sedimented textures of Bengali folklore.