One of India's greatest writers, Amitav Ghosh, argues that future generations may well think so. How else can we explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In this groundbreaking return to non-fiction, Ghosh examines our inability-at the level of literature, history and politics-to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence-a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all forms. The Great Derangement serves as a brilliant writer's summons to confront the most urgent task of our time. 'An absorbing narrative on the subject, the impact of which is getting closer with each passing day' HINDUSTAN TIMES '[A] broad-ranging and consistently stimulating indictment of our era . . . a bracing reminder that there is no more vital task for writers and artists than to clear the intellectual dead wood of a vulgarly boosterish age and create space for apocalyptic thinking-which may at least delay, if not avert, the catastrophes ahead' GUARDIAN
