Starred review from October 1, 2021
Distinguished writer Ghosh, whose most recent novel is Gun Island (2019), follows his nonfiction work, The Great Derangement (2016), with this stirring call for the arts to tackle the climate crisis. In this intense, energizing, and immensely intelligent work, Ghosh uses the history of the nutmeg tree as his focal point, leading readers through the murderous conduct of the Dutch traders who captured the market for the spice by committing genocide against the people and landscape from which it came. The seventeenth-century devastation--no, the desecration--of the Banda Islands was horrific. In their quest for control of the nutmeg market, the Dutch were willing to destroy everyone and everything, even to the extent of removing nutmeg trees from the ground on which they flourished. This environmental exploitation in pursuit of capitalist gain is the crux of Ghosh's thesis. The current climate change crisis, he asserts, is the direct result of centuries of colonialism, conquest, and the most rapacious of conduct by Western nations. With literary precision, he delves into the history and culture of conquest, drawing a direct line from actions committed hundreds of years ago to the planet's current predicament. A singular achievement and a title of its time, The Nutmeg's Curse reminds us why the land is crying.
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