Prabuddha Bhattacharya

A great book on a cursed history of colonialism, industrial expansion followed by terraforming, and ultimately resulting in the so-called exhaustion of the planet earth. The dominant philosophy in the name of rationalism attempting to wipe out vitalism and animism of the so-called savages, helped the imperialists to decimate the natives and squeeze the earth, only a lifeless resource to the contemporary scientists and thinkers. A wide range as the book depicts, sometimes the arguments seem to be stretched a bit. And while the author deals with a many layered critique of the Renaissance, or Enlightenment, he hasn't brought to our attention the later developments of historical ( Braudel) or anthropological studies of structuralism (Levi-Straus), or Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno ) or Benjamin - studies that have rescued the historical views from the western hegemony of evolutionism, a one sided chauvinist historicism.

All set in a very ambitious scheme, to relate the myth of Manasa Devi, the goddess of the Sundarbans who is supposed to be acting as a mediator between human world, a civilization based on the notion of development, and the elemental natural world, animal world, to a hauntingly global tour, decoding the rebus of the gun marchents perplexing adventure, the maze of the Venice ghettos, serpentine creeks and canals, the novel seems to be a bit overloaded with ecological agendas. Unlike all of his previous novels. One can relate the novel to his eye opening masterpiece - Great Derangement.