Place and Planet in Climate Fiction

Place and Planet in Climate Fiction

This poster positions Amitav Ghosh's Gun Island (2019) as a prime example of a contemporary literary mode that attempts to capture the planetary reality of climate change, thus revealing new possibilities in the cultural engagement with this escalating crisis. I explain how Ghosh uses place — or setting, in literary terms — as a vehicle to illuminate the global processes of the Anthropocene; the proposed word for our current geologic epoch, defined by the transformative human imprint upon the Earth and its snowballing repercussions, including climate change. Ghosh has insisted stories about climate change 'cannot be local' (New York Magazine, 2019). With a specific focus on the author's vivid portrayal of a fire-plagued Los Angeles, I demonstrate the ways in which Ghosh prioritises planet over place, with the effect that his settings more closely resemble symptoms of a planetary malaise than distinct, rounded regions in their own right. While Ghosh's depiction of a Los Angeles that appears almost entirely engulfed by fire might initially seem unconvincing or hyperbolic, then, I argue it is indicative of his broader narrative methodology: to superimpose a global crisis onto his localised spatial descriptions, conjuring a new mode of planetary realism. In scrutinising Ghosh's transnational tapestry, I highlight the particular potentials of fiction in representing the physical and philosophical implications of climate change.