Writing on Water

The recent oceanic turn in the humanities has brought to the foreground blue ecocriticism as a promising literary field and a sound critical framework capable of complementing ecocriticism, spurring reflections on alternative perspectives and deepening the knowledge on the relationship between humans and bodies of water. This book engages in a blue ecocritical analysis of The Hungry Tide (2004) and Gun Island (2019), two novels by the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. After an introductory chapter concerning the origins and principles of green ecocriticism, the book presents paradigms and images of blue ecocriticism, by focusing on the representation of water in literature and the human behaviours towards this fluid element. Blue ecocritical principles are then applied to Amitav Ghosh’s novels, thus highlighting the varying meanings and dimensions of water in the Indian author’s recent prose.