Countdown

On 11 May 1998 the Indian government tested five nuclear devices some forty kilometres from Pokaran. Seventeen days later Pakistan tested nuclear devices of its own. About three months after the tests, Amitav Ghosh went to the Pokaran area, after which he visited Kashmir as part of the defence minister’s entourage. He also went to the Siachen glacier in the Karakoram mountains where Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been exchanging fire since 1983. Ghosh then travelled through Pakistan and Nepal.
Countdown is partly a result of these journeys and conversations with many hundreds of people of the subcontinent. In its descriptions the book is haunting and evocative; and its analyses of the compulsions behind South Asia’s nuclearization, and the implications of this, are profound, deeply disturbing and, ultimately, chilling.

Click here to visit the Amitav Ghosh website