Clea Chakraverty

Clea Chakraverty lived for several years in India, where she worked as a journalist for various media, including Le Monde diplomatique. She also carried out research in anthropology. She is currently in charge of politics and society for the online magazine The Conversation France. In 2013, she won the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation’s Journalist grant for a reporting project, which led to the publication of her first novel , La Voix de Sita, by Globe on January 12, 2023.

 

In 21st-century India, an agro-pharmaceutical conglomerate, an Indian scientist and a biodiversity protection organization are in a frantic race to find Silphium, an ancient spice plant with magical properties. The plant is believed to have recently resurfaced in Anatolia, more than 2,000 years after its disappearance from the Cyrene region. To guide them, they rely on the writings of a young Persian disciple of Pliny the Elder, in the 1st century AD. Although silphium “officially” disappeared in the 2nd century AD, historians and botanists regularly report its resurgence. Perhaps the first victim of the “food fad”, this spice plant is in any case emblematic of the utilitarian exploitation of nature, as well as of the globalization of practices and knowledge. This ancient and contemporary conquest of silphium will form part of a novelistic project. I’d like it to combine – in keeping with my interests – mythical and everyday objects, academic research, journalistic investigation and work on the circulation of ideas and postcoloniality.