Amitav Ghosh is an 
Indian author,
well known for books such as 
The Shadow Lines, 
The Calcutta Chromosome, 
The Hungry Tide,
The Circle of Reason, etc.  He has done field work in 
Egypt on the fellaheen
village of Lataifa, which resulted in the book 
In an Antique Land
(1993).
The Shadow Lines won the 
Sahitya Akademi Award, India's most prestigious literary prize. Ghosh is currently Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature at the Queens College in the 
City University of New York.