Quote by Amitav Ghosh: “The climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of imagination.”

We have the data on climate change, but we still cannot quite imagine it happening. The failure to act is partly a failure of storytelling — our novels, films, and public conversations have not yet found ways to make the slow catastrophe feel real and urgent. Art is not decorative; it shapes what we believe is possible.

Ghosh published The Great Derangement in 2016, the same year the Paris Agreement on climate change was signed. Global temperatures were breaking records and scientists were issuing urgent warnings. Despite this, mainstream literary fiction and public culture were largely failing to engage with ecological catastrophe in proportion to its scale.

Indian novelist and essayist whose work spans colonial history, ecological crisis, and global displacement. His Ibis Trilogy and the essay collection The Great Derangement, published in 2016, are among his most celebrated works. He has taught at Harvard University and Columbia University and received the Dan David Prize in 2010.