This was a very interesting read. I enjoyed breaking up my novel reading with short books like this one. I loved that it incorporated increasing problems in climate change and natural disasters and encouraging authors to write more about them in fiction books.it was brilliant and shocking reading about the authors experience with a tornado in India. It really opened my eyes to what's going on in the world, and I believe this is the authors point. Plus, you also end up with a great list of books to read. These books are great for short insights into very important topics. Perfect for those who don't like heavy non-fiction books.

Many thanks to the author and publishers for bringing us this interesting read. You can always depend on penguin books to print very thought-provoking and interesting books.

The above review has already been placed on goodreads, waterstones, Google books, Barnes&noble, kobo, amazon UK where found and my blog today https://ladyreading365.wixsite.com/website/post/uncanny-improbable-events-by-amitav-ghosh-penguin-3-5-stars under ladyreading365 sorry for the delay

My low rating doesn’t reflect any issues with the text itself - it’s just that I don’t really understand the point of this book. To be clear, this is a re-published an extract from Ghosh’s book The Great Derangement under a new name. The Great Derangement is a good book that I would recommend to anyone. But it’s only 164 pages long (at least in my hardback copy) - so why not read or buy the full book, instead of this, which is a short extract from it? Similar, the original retails at about £10 while this costs £5, for I believe less than half the content. I’m not opposed to re-publishing in all forms, but this edition doesn’t add anything as far as I can tell; it’s not updated, it doesn’t collate a few speeches or articles published elsewhere into one volume, or include anything new from Ghosh. Just buy The Great Derangement instead.

In this short work, Ghosh explores how non-fiction focuses on climate change with clarity and vision, while fictional depictions of the world are much less likely to address the elephant in the room. This is, after all, the disaster that will make us extinct, and yet fiction which explores it is related as 'speculative' as opposed to 'definitely going to happen.' This was a really thought provoking look at what makes fiction, why we write, and how honest we're being with ourselves when we depict 'realism' on the page.

In the last two decades Amitav Ghosh has written some of the most intriguing, beautiful and exciting novels exploring human conquests and tragedies in many forms and over different periods and locations. The beauty of his language and the ability to build the reader’s empathy to the plight of individuals is paramount. As part of the penguin Green Ideas series, Amitav Ghosh has produced an essay that forces us to consider our failure or blindsightedness to recognise the impact of climate change especially within fiction and from the clear evidence of global changes. Why doesn’t literature fully recognise climate change and yet within non fiction it is highly evident?Based upon his own personal experiences of climate change , research of scientific evidence and exploration of different literature, Ghosh shines a bright light upon the gap within fiction to fully reflect what is happening to our planet and the discrepancy within published works. I was left with the question as to whether ultimately publishers regard fiction only as way to make money ( commercial success) and if as a species we are yet to want to confront in our daily lives what is happening and the far reaching impacts of climate change hence the wider buying public may just not be ready to accept the challenges we are confronting in their own “ escapism “ ( fiction reading ) and ultimately most authors have shied away from it within their works. Maybe Hollywood films have stretched the theme to such an extreme most people are now desensitised to what is happening and regard it as fiction.
PS But all is not lost as children’s fiction is certainly tackling climate change and confronting the future.

"It is as though in the literary imagination climate change were somehow akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel."

Here Amitav Ghosh brings together his own experience and the works of several other writers to give his thoughts on just why we as a society struggle to grasp the severity of climate change. Providing an interesting and cleverly thought out exploration into the literary world where climate issues only appear in the fiction section, this was deeply personal and thought provoking providing plenty of room for introspection.

Uncanny and Improbably Events is probably the 'wordiest' of the collection I've read so far and is quite dense, but in just under 100 pages it is definitely a must-read especially for other writers.