Learning to be vulnerable

As in almost all his novels, Mr Ghosh opens up new areas of discussion and debate

Early in Amitav Ghosh’s new novel Gun Island, the first-person narrator Dinanath Datta, a Brooklyn-based dealer in rare books, suffers a disappointment in love and is advised by his therapist to not be vulnerable. “Don’t set yourself up to fail, yet again,” he is told. A strange turn of events, however, sets him on an extraordinary journey during which he is compelled to be vulnerable again — and he rediscovers love. This process, in a way, is also a critique of western concepts of rationality and realistic narrative that Mr Ghosh seems to eschew in this book, discovering a new