Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He studied at the Doon School; St. Stephens College; Delhi University; Oxford University; and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alexandria. His first job was at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi. He earned his doctorate at Oxford before he wrote his first novel.

In February 2004 Amitav Ghosh was appointed Visiting Professor in the Department of English at Harvard University. He is married with two children and lives in New York.