Reclaiming the Unreal: Myth, Non-Human Agency, and Literary Imagination in Amitav Ghosh’s Climate Fiction

The accelerating climate crisis has prompted new directions in literature, especially within the genre of climate fiction (cli-fi). However, much of cli-fi remains bound to the conventions of Western realism, limiting its ability to capture the strangeness, scale, and non-human dimensions of ecological disruption. This article examines Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island as a significant departure from such narrative constraints. The aim of this research is to explore how Gun Island reclaims myth, supernatural elements, and non-Western epistemologies to offer an alternative model of climate storytelling—one that foregrounds multispecies agency, spiritual experience, and ecological entanglement. The study adopts a literary-analytical methodology, drawing on Ghosh’s theoretical arguments in The Great Derangement (2016), as well as insights from ecofeminism, postcolonial theory, and multispecies justice frameworks. Findings show that Gun Island uses non-linear narrative, symbolic motifs, and uncanny coincidences to resist anthropocentrism and capitalist realism. The novel positions animals, natural forces, and mythic beings as active agents, challenging Enlightenment binaries between fact and fiction, science and story, human and non-human. The article concludes that by embracing the “unreal,” Ghosh expands the imaginative capacity of cli-fi, urging a shift in literary form and ethical perspective. His narrative strategy invites readers to rethink realism itself in the age of planetary crisis, where re-enchantment may be vital to ecological awareness and survival.