4.0
The Nutmeg's Curse
ByPublisher Description
A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, Amitav Ghosh's new book traces our contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean.
argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh's narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh's hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis, revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials such as spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels. Our crisis, he shows, is ultimately the result of a mechanistic view of the earth, where nature exists only as a resource for humans to use for our own ends, rather than a force of its own, full of agency and meaning.
Writing against the backdrop of the global pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, Ghosh frames these historical stories in a way that connects our shared colonial histories with the deep inequality we see around us today. By interweaving discussions on everything from the global history of the oil trade to the migrant crisis and the animist spirituality of Indigenous communities around the world,
offers a sharp critique of Western society and speaks to the profoundly remarkable ways in which human history is shaped by non-human forces.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Nutmeg's Curse Reviews
4.0
“As ever, it takes me a stupidly long time to read non fiction but I can’t believe how much of an impact this book has had on me. Whenever someone asks me about the climate crisis and the nuances behind it I always recommend this book and I hadn’t even finished it yet. This will stay with me forever, I can’t believe how empathic Ghosh’s writing is - whilst talking about all these horrible things I felt like I was being wrapped in a warm hug. Like a grandad telling me the wisdoms and the ways of the world on his lap.
If you care about the planet, and the weird polarisation of our lives right now - this is a MUST read”
“Nutmeg’s Curse is my second full read from Ghosh and the opinions I’ve long held about Ghosh himself remain: he’s wickedly talented at conveying deep scientific realities whilst tying them to both the literary and the historic. This latter half is of more importance to me, seeing how literature conveyed, critiqued, or even amplified the planetary crisis (then and now), but the whole of Ghosh’s work is a masterclass in nonfiction.
The main gist of this text is to amplify nonhuman human voices in our stories, and especially the stories on the planetary crisis. Ghosh begins with the simple Nutmeg, a spice found primarily on the Bandanese islands, tracing its history with the Dutch and how said history is foundational to understanding both colonialism then (circa 1600s or so) and now. Throughout, Ghosh draws parallels to more recent events, even tying his work to the (at the time) on-going Covid-19 pandemic (circa 2020). This history is especially interesting given how amidst this pandemic there was a great deal of social change in the form of the Black Lives Matter protests. I, myself, saw similar parallels to the ongoing ICE raids and acts of violence in 2026, furthering how relevant this text is.
While I am not fully qualified to rate and review nonfiction (yet), I would like to add some two-cents for prospective readers. Ghosh is a careful and thoughtful writer, I would rank him as one of my favorite nonfiction writers. But, and I say this with the experience of having two non-fiction pieces from him now, he has moments where his momentum slows down. The opening of Nutmeg is riddled with interesting points and the story of the Bandanese is captivating. The middle portion of the text slows down because it loses some of that narrative glue that holds the first and last parts of the book together. I do think Ghosh writes generally for all audiences, but I think at times his writing can be a little data-heavy. And that’s not my particular cup of tea, so this could just be user error! All in all, he’s a fantastic writer and I do not regret the time I spent reading this (near a whole month).
4/5 Stars: Great writing, interesting parallels and revelations, accessible knowledge for all demographics. Just lacking a little extra momentum in the middle portion.”
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