Amitav Ghosh and Jonathan Spence – A Dialogue
VIEW EVENT DETAILSCross Sino-Indian borders and join us for the launch of the inaugural Asian Arts & Ideas Forum, 'The Chindia Dialogues,' a festive four-day forum of dialogues, conversations and performances that bring together established and emerging writers, thinkers, and performing artists from China and India to engage in a vital cultural dialogue. Confirmed speakers include: Amit Chaudhuri, Siddhartha Deb, Amitav Ghosh, Yu Hua, Zha Jianying, Ha Jin, Meena Kandasamy, Amitava Kumar, Andrea Lingenfelter, Suketu Mehta, Sharmistha Mohanty, Emily Parker, Allan Sealy, Jonathan Spence, Su Tong, Xu Xiaobin, and Murong Xuecun .
One of India’s best known writers, Amitav Ghosh, joins leading China scholar and Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale Jonathan Spence to discuss Ghosh’s landmark historical novel, River of Smoke (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, October 2011), Sino-Indian relations during the Opium Wars, and the relevance of the legacy of capitalism and colonialism to Asia’s emerging role in the 21st century. Introduced by Orville Schell, Director of Asia Society’s Center for U.S.-China Relations.
Followed by a reception book sale and signing with Amitav Ghosh of his new novel River of Smoke, the second volume in the Ibis Trilogy.
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and Sea of Poppies, and his most recently published, River of Smoke, which constitutes the second volume in The Ibis Trilogy. River of Smoke follows the characters from the Sea of Poppies from the expanding poppy fields of Bengal to the ports of China as the opium trade expands through 19th-century Asia. Sea of Poppies (2008) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2008 and was awarded the Crossword Book Prize and the IndiaPlaza Golden Quill Award. In 2007 Ghosh was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest honors, by the President of India.
Jonathan D. Spence is a British-born historian and public intellectual specializing in Chinese history. He is a Professor Emeritus of Yale University, where he was Sterling Professor of History from 1993 to 2008. His most famous book is The Search for Modern China, which has become one of the standard texts on the last several hundred years of Chinese history. A distinguished historian, prolific author, reviewer, and essayist, he has written numerous books on China, including The Search for Modern China (1990); The Chan’s Great Continent: China in Western Minds (1998); and Mao Zedong (1999), The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (1984); The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1895-1980 (1981); The Death of Woman Wang (1978). Spence was named a MacArthur Fellow and has received ten honorary degrees and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
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The "Chindia" Dialogues: November 3 - 6 at Asia Society.
For a full schedule for the Asian Arts and Ideas Forum click here.
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In conjunction with the Asia Society Museum exhibition Rabindranath Tagore: The Last Harvest, on view through December 31.
The Chindia Dialogues are co-sponsored by the Center for U.S.-China Relations, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and the India China Institute at the New School University in New York. Major support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Aashish and Dinny Devitre, Dr. Indu & Mridul Pathak, The Armand G. Erpf Fund, Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation, Arthur Loeb Foundation, China Energy Fund Committee, and other generous Asia Society supporters.