The Subject Too Big for Fiction
Author Amitav Ghosh argues that contemporary fiction struggles to capture the scale and impersonal nature of the climate crisis. The article critiques his latest work for failing to successfully integrate these ecological themes into a narrative format.
Why it matters
It explores the intersection of literature and climate change, questioning how art can address existential global threats.
Illustration by Vartika Sharma Books The Subject Too Big for Fiction Amitav Ghosh believes that climate change requires rethinking the novel. His new work of fiction fails that standard.
Save Is there any subject that fiction cannot address? From its beginnings as a form, the novel has dealt with love and hate, war and peace, courage and cowardice, boredom and catastrophe. Yet there is far more in heaven and earth than any human can convey. In the view of the writer Amitav Ghosh, one subject especially threatens to elude fiction’s comprehension. “The climate crisis,” he writes in his book-length 2016 essay , The Great Derangement , “is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination.”
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in