New Delhi, Dec 14 : Eminent English writer Amitav Ghosh has been honoured with this year’s
Jnanpith Award for his “outstanding contribution towards literature”.
A meeting of the Jnanpith selection board headed by novelist, scholar and Jnanpith laureate Pratibha Ray took the decision on Friday.
Announcing this, Bharatiya Jnanpith said “Amitav Ghosh is a path-breaking novelist. In his novels, Ghosh treads through historical settings to the modern era and weaves a space where the past connects with the present in relevant ways.
“His fiction is endowed with extraordinary depth and substance through his academic training as a historian and a social anthropologist,” the statement said.
Reacting to the honour, the author tweeted that he was “honoured and humbled”.
Ghosh has authored the critically-acclaimed and popular novels such as “Shadow Lines”, “The Glass Palace”,
“The Hungry Tide”, and Ibis Trilogy — “Sea of Poppies”, “River of Smoke”, and “Flood of Fire”.
Born in Kolkata in 1956, the author completed his education from the Delhi School of Economics, before going on to study at the University of Oxford.
He is recipient of the Padma Shri and Sahitya Akademi awards.
He is also an Arthur C Clarke awardee as also Prix Médicis étranger.
Ghosh lives in New York with his wife Deborah Baker.
