In an Antique Land

Amitav Ghosh · b. 1956 · India

Why it matters

Ghosh's own fieldwork in an Egyptian village braids with his archival reconstruction, drawn from Cairo Geniza documents, of a twelfth-century Jewish merchant and his enslaved Indian clerk. A genre-defying blend of anthropology, travel writing, and buried history.

At a glance

Braided timelines, medieval archival material set against contemporary fieldwork, ask readers to hold two eras at once.