NEW YORK(TIP): Indian American Historian Sunil Amrith’s “Unruly Waters: How Rains, Rivers, Coasts, and Seas Have Shaped Asia’s History,” has been shortlisted for the 2019 Cundill History Prize. The Cundill History Prize is a prestigious annual award valued at USD $75,000. The prize celebrates a recently published history bookthat displays both academic scholarship and literary merit.

The shortlist of five women and three men was revealed on 19 September by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor, who chairs the prize, alongside a jury of world-class historians at an event in New York City. It includes books that tackle issues from climate change in Asia to Maoism as an international force.

In Unruly Waters: How Rains, Rivers, Coasts, and Seas Have Shaped Asia’s History, Harvard historian Sunil Amrith follows monsoons, mountain rivers, and ocean currents to trace the dramatic history of water in South Asia, providing a new perspective on the region and urgent input into how to address global climate risks.

Sunil Amrith is the Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies at Harvard University.His research is on the trans-regional movement of people, ideas, and institutions. Areas of particular interest include the history of public health and poverty, the history of migration, and environmental history. His most recent work has been on the Bay of Bengal as a region connecting South and Southeast Asia. He has a PhD in History (2005) from the University of Cambridge, where he was also a Research Fellow of Trinity College (2004-6).