Eminent novelist Amitav Ghosh has been chosen for this year’s Jnanpith Award, the Bharatiya Jnanpith announced on Friday.
The award is given to an author for “outstanding contribution towards literature”.
“Amitav Ghosh is a path-breaking novelist,” the Bharatiya Jnanpith said in a statement. “In his novels, Ghosh treads through historical settings to the modern era and weaves a space where the past connects with the present in relevant ways. His fiction is endowed with extraordinary depth and substance through his academic training as a historian and a social anthropologist,” the literary organisation said.
“Congratulations to @GhoshAmitav on winning the #JnanpithAward 2018. I have fond memories of your stay at Rashtrapati Bhavan as a part of the ‘In Residence’ programme,” former President Pranab Mukherjee tweeted.
The decision to honour Mr. Ghosh was taken at a meeting of the Jnanpith Selection Board chaired by novelist and Jnanpith laureate Pratibha Ray.
Mr. Ghosh’s novels include Shadow Lines , The Glass Palace , The Hungry Tide , and the Ibis trilogy — Sea of Poppies , River of Smoke , and Flood of Fire — discussing the opium trade between India and China run by the East India Company.
(With PTI inputs)
