UH India Studies Program Hosts Award-Winning Author Amitav Ghosh, April 10

HOUSTON, TX, March 15, 2014 (Press-News.org) The India Studies Program at the University of Houston (UH) has invited award-winning author and distinguished scholar Amitav Ghosh to deliver a lecture, "From Bombay to Canton - Traveling the Opium Route to 19th Century China," at 7 p.m., Thursday, April 10, at the Asia Society Texas Center. The event is free and open to the public.

"Amitav Ghosh's literary work spans centuries, continents and cultures. It is said that to understand India, you must live in five centuries at once - and so you do when you read his novels. He allows you to inhabit several cultures at once," said Lois Zamora, chair of the Department of Comparative and Cultural Studies, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS).

The goal of the India Studies Program is to promote teaching and scholarship focused on the history, politics, economics, languages, religion and culture of India. UH offers a minor in India studies and comparative cultural studies.

"The upcoming lecture by Dr. Ghosh is the kind of programming that speaks to the growth of the India Studies Program and its intentions to be an academic and cultural asset to UH, the city of Houston and the diasporic Indian community that enriches both the university and city," said John W. Roberts, dean of CLASS where the India Studies Program resides in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies.

Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He earned degrees from St. Stephen's College in Delhi and University of Delhi and was awarded a Ph.D. in social anthropology from University of Oxford in England. He has taught at the University of Delhi, Columbia and Harvard universities, as well as appointed as a Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Queens College, City University of New York.

Ghosh 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 the first two novels in the unfinished Ibis trilogy, "Sea of Poppies" and "River of Smoke."

"The Circle of Reason" was awarded the Prix Medicis in 1990, and "The Shadow Lines" won two prestigious Indian prizes, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar. "The Calcutta Chromosome" won the Arthur C. Clarke award for 1997 and "The Glass Palace" won the International e-Book Award at the Frankfurt book fair in 2001. In January 2005, "The Hungry Tide" was awarded the Crossword Book Prize. His novel, "Sea of Poppies" was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008, and awarded the Crossword Book Prize and the India Plaza Golden Quill Award.

Ghosh's work has been translated into more than 20 languages. His essays have been published in The New Yorker, The New Republic and The New York Times. He has been awarded honorary degrees by the Sorbonne, Paris, and Queens College, City University of New York.

WHAT:
UH India Studies Program features the Indian novelist, Amitav Ghosh
"From Bombay to Canton: Traveling the Opium Route to 19th Century China"

WHEN:
7 - 8:30 p.m. Thursday, April 10
Q&A by UH Professor Chitra Divakaruni
8:30 p.m. Reception and Book Signing
Books will be available to purchase at the event.

WHO:
Free and open to the public.
Please RSVP to
http://asiasociety.org/texas/events/authors-asia-amitav-ghosh-bombay-canton

WHERE:
Asia Society Texas Center
1370 Southmore Blvd.
Houston, Texas 77004
http://asiasociety.org/texas/visit/plan-your-visit

About the University of Houston
The University of Houston is a Carnegie-designated Tier One public research university recognized by The Princeton Review as one of the nation's best colleges for undergraduate education. UH serves the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by providing world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry partnerships. Located in the nation's fourth-largest city, UH serves more than 39,500 students in the most ethnically and culturally diverse region in the country. For more information about UH, visit the university's newsroom at http://www.uh.edu/news-events/