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

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.