Are humans the only beings that are endowed with the ability to communicate and make meaning? For a long time, it was assumed that this was axiomatically true. But one effect of our increasingly climate-disrupted world is that it has made us aware that our minds and bodies are deeply intertwined with many other organisms, entities and forces. This lecture examines some of these entanglements through the story of the nutmeg tree.

Born in Calcutta, Amitav Ghosh grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied at the University of Delhi and the University of Oxford from where he received a D. Phil. in social anthropology. He is the author of four books of non-fiction, a collection of essays and nine novels. He has also published a verse adaptation of a legend from the Sundarbans and an environmental fable. His books have won many prizes and he holds four honorary doctorates. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages and he has served on the Jury of the Locarno and Venice film festivals. In 2018 he became the first English-language writer to receive India’s highest literary honor, the Jnanpith Award. His most recent publication is Smoke and Ashes: A Writer’s Journey Through Opium’s Hidden Histories.

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