Description
In the early 1980s, a young scholar arrives in rural Egypt to follow a trail of voices and records—trying to retrace the life of an unknown Indian slave whose story has survived only in fragments. As he moves through everyday worlds in two villages, he builds relationships and observes the textures of local culture, while a parallel narrative reconstructs the 12th-century world of a Jewish merchant using the remarkable evidence of the Cairo Geniza. Blending travel writing, historical reconstruction, and close anthropological attention, the book explores how memory travels across oceans, how identities are shaped by trade and displacement, and how the past can be reassembled from what remains. With Amitav Ghosh’s signature blend of vivid scene-making and meticulous scholarship, this is a journey through history’s living echoes—where research becomes a form of storytelling and discovery.
Available Editions
paperback
Brand: Ravi Dayal Publishers and Penguin Books
Published Jan 1, 2009
336 pages
ISBN: 9780143066491
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Details
First Published
1992
Language
eng
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh.