The great derangement : climate change and the unthinkable /
Ghosh, Amitav, 1956-
The great derangement : climate change and the unthinkable / Amitav Ghosh - 196 pages ; 23 cm - The Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin family lectures . - Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin family lectures .
Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-196)
Stories -- History -- Politics
"Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability--at the level of literature, history, and politics--to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The extreme nature of today's climate events, Ghosh asserts, makes them peculiarly resistant to contemporary modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable for the novel; they are automatically consigned to other genres. In the writing of history, too, the climate crisis has sometimes led to gross simplifications; Ghosh shows that the history of the carbon economy is a tangled global story with many contradictory and counterintuitive elements. Ghosh ends by suggesting that politics, much like literature, has become a matter of personal moral reckoning rather than an arena of collective action. But to limit fiction and politics to individual moral adventure comes at a great cost. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence--a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all cultural forms. His book serves as a great writer's summons to confront the most urgent task of our time."--Jacket
9780226323039 022632303X 022632317X 9780226526812 022652681X 9780226323176
40026553088
Univ of Chicago Pr, Attn: John Kessler 11030 S Langley Ave, Chicago, IL, USA, 60628, (773)5681550 SAN 202-5280
2016018232
Climatic changes in literature
Climate change
Environmental disasters
Literature--History and criticism
PN56.C612 / G48 2016
809/.9336
PN56.C612 / G48 2016
The great derangement : climate change and the unthinkable / Amitav Ghosh - 196 pages ; 23 cm - The Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin family lectures . - Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin family lectures .
Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-196)
Stories -- History -- Politics
"Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability--at the level of literature, history, and politics--to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The extreme nature of today's climate events, Ghosh asserts, makes them peculiarly resistant to contemporary modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable for the novel; they are automatically consigned to other genres. In the writing of history, too, the climate crisis has sometimes led to gross simplifications; Ghosh shows that the history of the carbon economy is a tangled global story with many contradictory and counterintuitive elements. Ghosh ends by suggesting that politics, much like literature, has become a matter of personal moral reckoning rather than an arena of collective action. But to limit fiction and politics to individual moral adventure comes at a great cost. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence--a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all cultural forms. His book serves as a great writer's summons to confront the most urgent task of our time."--Jacket
9780226323039 022632303X 022632317X 9780226526812 022652681X 9780226323176
40026553088
Univ of Chicago Pr, Attn: John Kessler 11030 S Langley Ave, Chicago, IL, USA, 60628, (773)5681550 SAN 202-5280
2016018232
Climatic changes in literature
Climate change
Environmental disasters
Literature--History and criticism
PN56.C612 / G48 2016
809/.9336
PN56.C612 / G48 2016