Amitav Ghosh is an Indian writer born on 11 July 1956. He won the 54th Jnanpith award in 2018, which is India's highest literary honour. Ghosh's ambitious novels employ complex narrative strategies to explore the nature of national and personal identity, particularly of the people of India and South Asia. He has authored both historical fiction and non-fiction, addressing topics such as colonialism and climate change.

Ghosh studied at The Doon School in Dehradun, and earned a doctorate in social anthropology at the University of Oxford. He worked at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi and several academic institutions. His debut novel, The Circle of Reason, was published in 1986, which he followed with other fictional works, including The Shadow Lines and The Glass Palace. Between 2004 and 2015, he developed the Ibis trilogy, revolving around the First Opium War's buildup and implications. His non-fiction includes In an Antique Land (1992) and The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016).

Ghosh holds two Lifetime Achievement awards and four honorary doctorates. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India's highest honours, by the President of India. In 2010, he was a joint winner, along with Margaret Atwood, of a Dan David prize, and in 2011, he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis festival in Montreal. He was the first English-language writer to receive this award. In 2019, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade.