Gun Island - A Discussion and Book Launch

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He grew up in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India. He studied at the universities of Delhi and Oxford and published the first of eight novels, The Circle of Reason, in 1986. The first novel in his Ibis trilogy, Sea of Poppies, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He received the Jnanpith Award in 2018.

Shekhar Kapur is a globally-recognised film director, media visionary and proponent on the future of New Media. Having started his career as an accountant, management consultant and economist in London, he returned to India in search of a new direction and went on to become a well-known actor, director, writer and producer. He is best known for films, such as Elizabeth the Golden Age, Bandit Queen and Four Feathers, that have won or been nominated for numerous awards including the Oscars, BAFTAs and Filmfare Awards. He has executive produced the Bollywood-themed, Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Bombay Dreams as well as films such as The Guru for Universal Studios. He set up Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation, focused on creating new stories and characters for a global audience, with Richard Branson and Deepak Chopra. He is the Founder and Chairman of Qyuki Media, a company he started last year in partnership with Cisco, and is creating emotive Social Media communities beyond Facebook. He also sits on a number of boards and advisory committees including the Media Development Authority of Singapore, the Prime Minister of India’s Special Advisory Board for Innovation, Media and New Media and the International Global Water Challenge. He was given one of India’s highest civilian state awards, the Padma Shri, for his service to media in the nation.