“If you find some parts in the book very unlikely to be true, that's probably fact," said Amitav Ghosh, when asked how to distinguish between fact and fiction in his works. History is full of Black Swan events, he stressed. He was speaking after releasing the much-awaited third book of his Ibis trilogy Flood of Fire in the city on Friday. He read passages from the book and was in conversation with Rohan Murty, the brain behind the recently-launched Murthy Classic Library of India series.
Talking about the Bengaluru connection, Ghosh said, “Most of the soldiers who fought for the British in the first Opium War came from south India. The British also used rocket technology that was introduced by Hyder Ali.”
Many of the great families of the West and prominent educational institutions had made their wealth through the opium trade, he pointed out.
His answer to how he brought alive the emotions and daily lives of people, things that were hard to find in archives, was simple: "I'm a novelist. I make it up!" The research for the novel involved multiple visits to archives and libraries and making do with limited military records from the Indian side. “Despite Indian soldiers and merchants playing a vital role in the conflict, not many accounts survive,” he said.
The question and answer session proved to be an interesting affair, with questions ranging from a sweet from the Magadh region to the possibility of his books being made into movies. A writer should stretch himself, he said.
