Author Amitav Ghosh says writers must give voice to marginal communities in works about the climate

SINGAPORE – The Singapore Writers Festival 2026 is quietly welcoming one of the world’s foremost literary figures. Indian-born author Amitav Ghosh, 70, is set to give a keynote lecture at the Victoria Theatre on Nov 14.

It will be on a subject closely associated with the author since his 2016 book, The Great Derangement: Climate Change And The Unthinkable, argued that writers and artists failed spectacularly in reckoning with the climate crisis.

A Writer’s Reimagining Of Our Planetary Future will require a $35 ticket. He will also be in conversation with Singapore authors Jemimah Wei and Balli Kaur Jaswal on Nov 15, open to all festival pass holders.

Ghosh, in an e-mail interview, says he has “a great appreciation” for Singapore, having spent time here in the 1990s researching for the historical novel The Glass Palace (2000), set in Burma, India and Malaya. While here, his focus on World War II and the Japanese Occupation meant he had little opportunity to meet the writing community.

“In fact, the only Singaporean writer whom I know at all well is Kishore Mahbubani, the diplomat,” he says. “I found his memoir absolutely fascinating, especially his recollections of his school days.”

Since Ghosh’s damning 2016 polemic, potent works reflecting the complexity and scale of the climate emergency have only proliferated, perhaps partly in response to his rallying cry.

Today, he has no trouble citing impressive examples. A personal favourite of his precedes his treatise – English author Liz Jensen’s 2009 eco-thriller The Rapture, in which discerning readers might find similarities between Jensen’s psychic teenager and a protagonist who recalls a past life in Ghosh’s latest novel, Ghost-Eye (2026).

Other writers subsequently adopted similarly inventive approaches. Ghosh singles out Richard Powers’ The Overstory (2018) and American author Ruth Ozeki. “They confront what is to me the greatest challenge that faces writers today, which is that of representing non-human forms of sentience.”

Then, just in 2026, Bangladeshi writer Tahmima Anam’s Uprising (2026) set its sights on the challenges a group of Bengali sex workers face on a floating brothel, including rising sea levels. It is another central tenet of Ghosh’s conscience: that there is no single climate crisis, but “an intersecting matrix of crises” experienced in particular by poorer communities.

“Credentialed experts are by no means the only people who have something to say about the planetary crisis,” he says. “Around the world, there are multitudes of people who, despite having no credentials whatsoever, have long been aware that environmental conditions are changing. These are, above all, the people who are at the forefront: subsistence farmers, fisherfolk, forest dwellers and indigenous peoples.

“To my mind, it is very important for writers to give voice to these people. After all, if writers don’t do this, who will?”

Ghosh’s acclaimed oeuvre includes the Ibis trilogy (2008–2015), an opium-trade saga whose individual novels earned him shortlists for the Booker Prize (Sea of Poppies) and the Man Asian Literary Prize (River of Smoke). His entire body of work in 2015 was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. In 2019, he was conferred the 54th Jnanpith Award, India’s oldest and highest literary honour.

For some time now, Ghosh has sought non-secular and non-modern methods of confronting the climate crisis. He has spoken of his scepticism about technology’s ability to solve the world’s problems, and instead has found joy delving into pre-modern Bengali literature.

While the effects of the climate crisis have become increasingly visible, writing about it is still best done with ancient tools.

“Myths and legends have no problem in dealing with centuries and even millennia. The opening passages of Journey To The West, for example, range over vast temporal and spatial scales.”

In 2025, Ghosh became the 12th author to be invited to contribute to the Future Library project, penning a secret manuscript that will be printed only in 2114 using paper made from spruce trees planted by artist Katie Paterson in Northern Oslo, Norway.

In the spirit of the project, Ghosh is keeping mum about his entry, Letter To My Grandson, but says: “The world is indeed likely to be completely unrecognisable then, so I don’t know whether the themes will resonate very widely. However, one thing I am certain of is that the manuscript will be important for my grandchildren.”

At 70, he has not fallen into the trap of disengagement from the world. Despite some despair over the climate, geopolitical developments, particularly the shunting of Europe to the margins, have been unimaginable and exciting.

“China, and Eurasia in general, has once again occupied the centre of the stage, as had been the case for millennia before the expansion of European colonisation,” he says.

“This is not something I had imagined I would see in my lifetime. As Margaret Atwood once said, ‘It’s not just climate change; it’s everything change’.”

Book It/Amitav Ghosh – A Writer’s Reimagining Of Our Planetary Future

Where: Victoria Theatre, 9 Empress Place
When: Nov 14, 1.30pm
Admission: $35
Info: https://www.singaporewritersfestival.com/programmes/festival-keynote-talk-amitav-ghosh-a-writers-reimagining-of-our-planetary-future

Book It/What The Family Doesn’t Say

Where: Victoria Theatre, 9 Empress Place
When: Nov 15, 3.30pm
Admission: Festival Pass, $30 (SG Culture Pass eligible)
Info:https://www.singaporewritersfestival.com/programmes/what-the-family-doesnt-say