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icbikecommuter's review
4.0
Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well this so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? The book is split into three parts: stories, history, and politics. I appreciated his nonwestern view including imperialism as well as capitalism leading to our current climate crisis. I especially enjoyed the history and politics sections. Here’s to hoping for real change at COP26!!
mmillerb's review
4.0
good, if a little dated in its observations. nothing mindblowing but still nice reminders. less sold on the literary side of things, too, which is weird when written by a novelist—surprising lack of more contemporary lit. but i’m nice so 4
jzkannel's review
3.0
I generally tend to have a positive bias towards books on climate change, because I think they should be read more, but this one was hard to follow. It felt like he took a very circuitous route to any point he was trying to make, and dropped a lot of references in there for the sake of making references. This book was broken up into 3 sections, and a majority of the reason this got 3 stars instead of 2 is recency bias because the 3rd section I found the most interesting and had lots of good points. Definitely don't want to dissuade people from checking it out, but I think it's unnecessary for someone who already understands the problems posed by climate change and is certainly not the book I would use to convert a denier.
kenzimani's review against another edition
3.0
Slow going but a sprinkling of gems kept my interest and now I want to re-read to find them again. I particularly liked the political section.
grey_rose's review
dark
informative
tense
medium-paced
2.5
Though a good 101 to many climate crisis concepts, his writing is quite bad. Often, he uses sweeping generalizations, conjecture, and unsupported logic in an attempt to support his arguments. I found myself frustrated with his poor analysis and understanding of media and culture as it relates to climate, economy, and history. His plea to creators to write about the climate crisis, seemingly the book's thesis, takes a backseat after being poorly argued.
He argues that novels aren't writing about climate, but notes si-fi as an exception, but then makes an argument that this doesn't matter but then tries to talk about the devaluation of genre fiction, while himself praising his own literary fiction. It's really annoying.
He argues that novels aren't writing about climate, but notes si-fi as an exception, but then makes an argument that this doesn't matter but then tries to talk about the devaluation of genre fiction, while himself praising his own literary fiction. It's really annoying.
wargortarg's review
3.0
I had been meaning to read Amitav Ghosh for quite a while, and finally started with one of his smaller works. It should be noted that this book was published right before the Trump era began in 2016, which means he didn't anticipate America to back off from major climate agreements and deals, though heavily implied that the imperialist countries are shaking their hands off the core issue. A lot of personal experiences have been woven in, in addition to focus on India -- which hits the issue closer to home. The author talks about the colonial imprint and the imbalance of world powers resulting in the big bully nations beating down on the developing nations for their lunch money. I am unsure how much of his argument on novels or media not highlighting climate change is relevant anymore, with movies like Don't Look Up or The Guilty making it seem very real. Overall, a decent read but can't be considered to be a well-rounded analysis of the subject.
aaronrosenblum's review
5.0
Brilliant. Vital reading for understanding the Anthropocene and why we struggle to even conceptualize it.