10/27/99

Diane Manuel, News Service (650) 725-1945; e-mail: dmanuel@leland.stanford.edu

Indian novelist Ghosh to speak at Stanford Nov. 3

Indian novelist and nonfiction writer Amitav Ghosh will present a lecture titled "The March of the Novel Through History: The Testimony of My Grandfather's Bookcase" at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 3, in Annenberg Auditorium.

The lecture about Indian literature and its connections with world literature is based on an essay that won the Pushcart Prize for 1999.

Ghosh's novel The Shadow Lines received the annual prize of the Sahitya Akademi (India's National Academy of Letters) and the Ananda Puraskar in 1990. His books have won many awards and have been translated into many languages. The Circle of Reason and In an Antique Land were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year. He frequently contributes to the New Yorker and other periodicals.

With this event the Stanford South Asia Initiative inaugurates a series of lectures in the arts, humanities and social sciences. There will be one special lecture each quarter for the next two years.

The new lecture series is supported by the President's Fund and the Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, which have provided a three-year grant to support the development of South Asia studies.

Ghosh's lecture also is supported by K.B. Chandrashekhar of Exodus Communications Inc. and co-sponsored by the Humanities Center, the Creative Writing Program, the Department of Comparative Literature, the Asian Religions and Cultures Initiative, the Program in Modern Thought and Literature, Asian American Studies and Sanskriti.

More information is available on the web at www.saja.org/ghosh.html.

For additional details contact Linda Hess at 725-9732 or lionda@leland.stanford.edu.

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