Planetary Los Angeles: Climate Realism and Transnational Narrative in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island (2019)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay argues that the fire-plagued Los Angeles of Amitav Ghosh’s 2019 novel Gun Island functions as a device to illuminate the planetary processes and continuities of climate change and the Anthropocene. I demonstrate the ways in which Ghosh makes metaphorical connections between the disparate settings of his novel – particularly L.A and the Sundarbans delta in the Bay of Bengal – to portray the Earth as a single living organism defined by environmental, ecological and social flux. As a consequence of this transnational narrative, Los Angeles becomes a symptom of planetary malaise rather than a distinct, bounded space. Analysing Gun Island primarily through the framework of Lynn Badia, Marija Cetinic and Jeff Diamanti’s conception of ‘climate realism’ – with reference also to Amy Elias and Christian Moraru’s ‘planetarity’ and Ursula Heise’s ‘sense of planet’ – I explain how the novel exhibits a contemporary realist form that rejects provincial thinking and advocates a planetary consciousness. Moreover, I contend that Gun Island departs from the long lineage of Los Angeles disaster literature, suggesting that Ghosh’s L.A does not expose national anxieties – as has often been the case in such fiction – but rather a planetary condition.