ABSTRACT
Covering the encounter between Indians and Egyptians at different times over an eight-hundred-year span, In an Antique Land melds many genres. The modes of intellectual or narrative expression that Ghosh deploys produce a work that challenges the categories he explores and forces a contemplation of form, the shapes and contours usually associated with distinct genres. In the introductory essay to the inaugural issue of the journal, Studies in Travel Writing, Peter Hulme remarks on the vigorous interest recently accorded to travel writing. This focus on location challenges the intellectual boundaries associated with fields such as anthropology and history. The pre-colonial world Ghosh creates in In an Antique Land challenges many of the assumptions we make about it, about the advent of colonialism and indeed about the postcolonial world. Bomma's mediaeval society is richly seen by Ghosh as a vital, cosmopolitan one that puts to shame our current notions of cosmopolitanism.
