''In Sumana Roy's elegant translation, Bose's arguments remain fresh, vivid, and compelling to those reading his book in English today.''

-Ramachandra Guha

''A fine introduction to the literary oeuvre of the scientist who pioneered the study of plant sentience.''

-Amitav Ghosh


In The Man Who Made Plants Write, internationally renowned poet and critic Sumana Roy translates Jagadish Chandra Bose's revolutionary writings on the environment.

Bose (1858-1937), a scientist and polymath, devoted much of his time to presenting a sophisticated vision of plant communication. He suggested that trees had an 'unvoiced life', their own idiom as it were, a way of responding to each other and to the world around, which could be recorded as a 'script' with a crescograph. In his essay collection Abyakta - 'The Unsaid' - Bose implored his readers to tune into the 'airborne sounds' these beings emitted and to the 'endless music sung everywhere'.

More than a hundred years after Abyakta's publication, Sumana Roy, in a translation that is nuanced, tender and rich in lyricism, brings to readers Bose's legacy - his body of work engaging with the natural world's innate intelligence. His views, dismissed as idiosyncratic and unscientific when he was alive, have only gained in significance over time, as climate experts call for a plant-sentience-led approach to conservation. By provocatively challenging a hierarchy of living beings where flora and fauna get relegated to the bottom, and by reminding us of the need to approach the issue of sustainability through the lens of compassion, Bose's work remains relevant, urgent and, in many ways, prophetic.