Multinational Research Society Publisher

Rewriting Colonial Archives: History and Fiction in Amitav Ghosh’s Narrative Art


Sr No:
Page No: 7-9
Language: English
Authors: Rakesh Kumar Singh* , Dr. Somnath Jha
Received: 2025-11-20
Accepted: 2026-01-05
Published Date: 2026-01-18
Abstract:
Amitav Ghosh’s narrative art is distinguished by a sustained engagement with colonial archives and their silences, distortions, and exclusions. His novels interrogate the authority of official historical records produced under colonial regimes and seek to recover marginalized voices erased from dominant historiography. By blending archival research with fictional imagination, Ghosh rewrites history from below, foregrounding the experiences of subaltern subjects such as migrants, indentured laborers, traders, sailors, and indigenous communities. This research article examines how Ghosh reconfigures colonial archives through fiction, focusing on novels such as The Shadow Lines, In an Antique Land, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and the Ibis Trilogy (Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire). Drawing on postcolonial historiography, New Historicism, and theories of archival power, the study argues that Ghosh’s fiction challenges the supposed objectivity of colonial records and offers alternative ways of remembering the past. His narrative practice transforms history into a dialogic space where official documents, oral histories, memory, and imagination coexist, thereby democratizing historical knowledge and questioning the epistemological foundations of colonial modernity.
Keywords: Colonial Archives, History and Fiction, Postcolonial Historiography, Narrative Reconstruction, Subaltern Voices.

Journal: MRS Journal of Arts, Humanities and Literature
ISSN(Online): 3049-1444
Publisher: MRS Publisher
Frequency: Monthly
Language: English

Rewriting Colonial Archives: History and Fiction in Amitav Ghosh’s Narrative Art