Overview

Why are activists throwing soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers? What associations does the poisonous brown recluse spider have with a centuries old myth from the Sundarbans? How does an ancient Chinese calligrapher’s recording of snowfall on his way home connect with Indian farmers marching for justice in Delhi or Mumbai? In The Climate Crossroads, the author weaves his own journey as a writer of critically acclaimed climate stories and environmental activist with personal anecdotes, literary theory, philosophy, history, and art, presenting a multi-faceted portrayal of literature’s ongoing encounter with climate change. Blending engaging storytelling with lucid analysis of a few important climate novels, the book explores how stories help us comprehend this existential crisis and prepare ourselves to experience the unimaginable. Underpinned by strong theoretical foundations which range from Kantian ethics to the Freudian uncanny, and presented with a medley of visualisations, the book reveals the hidden dynamics between planet, politics and literary art as it bears witness to literature’s quest for meaning in unprecedented times.

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9789369520091

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Rajat Chaudhuri is a fiction writer, climate communicator, interdisciplinary researcher and literary critic. He is the author of the Book Riot-listed and critically acclaimed climate novel The Butterfly Effect among several other full-length works. As a fiction editor he has been part of the international teams that introduced and published the groundbreaking solarpunk fiction anthologies Multispecies Cities – Solarpunk Urban Futures and Solarpunk Creatures. He was also one of four contributing writers for the popular climate change video game Survive the Century which recently appeared as a book. Besides translating fiction, poetry and memoirs from Bengali, he also published Wonder Tales for a Warming Planet, a book of climate stories for children. Rajat is a British Council Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellow, a Hawthornden Castle Fellow, and he has represented civil society groups from developing nations at the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. He speaks and writes about climate change and possible futures in a variety of local and global venues. Rajat is a co-author of a forthcoming book by the Club of Rome.

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