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Ibis Trilogy #1
Sea of Poppies
At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Her destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean shortly before the outbreak of the Opium Wars in China. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners on board, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of Canton.
513 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2008
About the author
Amitav Ghosh
53 books3,690 followersAmitav Ghosh is one of India's best-known writers. His books include The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, Incendiary Circumstances, The Hungry Tide. His most recent novel, Sea of Poppies, is the first volume of the Ibis Trilogy.
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He studied in Dehra Dun, New Delhi, Alexandria and Oxford and his first job was at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi. He earned a doctorate at Oxford before he wrote his first novel, which was published in 1986.
The Circle of Reason won the Prix Medicis Etranger, one of France's top literary awards, and The Shadow Lines won the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar. The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for 1997 and The Glass Palace won the Grand Prize for Fiction at the Frankfurt International e-Book Awards in 2001. The Hungry Tide won the Hutch Crossword Book Prize in 2006. In 2007 Amitav Ghosh was awarded the Grinzane Cavour Prize in Turin, Italy. Amitav Ghosh has written for many publications, including the Hindu, The New Yorker and Granta, and he has served on the juries of several international film festivals, including Locarno and Venice. He has taught at many universities in India and the USA, including Delhi University, Columbia, the City University of New York and Harvard. He no longer teaches and is currently writing the next volume of the Ibis Trilogy.
He is married to the writer, Deborah Baker, and has two children, Lila and Nayan. He divides his time between Kolkata, Goa and Brooklyn.
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He studied in Dehra Dun, New Delhi, Alexandria and Oxford and his first job was at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi. He earned a doctorate at Oxford before he wrote his first novel, which was published in 1986.
The Circle of Reason won the Prix Medicis Etranger, one of France's top literary awards, and The Shadow Lines won the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar. The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for 1997 and The Glass Palace won the Grand Prize for Fiction at the Frankfurt International e-Book Awards in 2001. The Hungry Tide won the Hutch Crossword Book Prize in 2006. In 2007 Amitav Ghosh was awarded the Grinzane Cavour Prize in Turin, Italy. Amitav Ghosh has written for many publications, including the Hindu, The New Yorker and Granta, and he has served on the juries of several international film festivals, including Locarno and Venice. He has taught at many universities in India and the USA, including Delhi University, Columbia, the City University of New York and Harvard. He no longer teaches and is currently writing the next volume of the Ibis Trilogy.
He is married to the writer, Deborah Baker, and has two children, Lila and Nayan. He divides his time between Kolkata, Goa and Brooklyn.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,885 reviews
October 31, 2015
This rollicking adventure story about colonial India was beaten to the 2008 Booker Prize by The White Tiger, a novel that trades on its gritty realism but which is actually just as much a fantasy of Indian life as this one. On the face of it, Sea of Poppies seems the more enjoyable. It has a huge, Dickensian cast that includes a fallen Rajah, a Chinese opium addict, a European girl gone native, a cross-dressing reincarnated saint, an American freedman and a poppy-farmer's widow, and its plot takes in dramatic rescues, nefarious Brits, girls-dressed-as-boys, floggings and secret assignations and portentous items of jewelry. Yet somehow there seems to be little going on under the surface – it's thematically a bit hollow and I kept feeling that I should be liking it more than I was.
At first glance, it's the sort of writing that should really appeal to me, because Ghosh's entry into this world and to these characters is all linguistic. Every character has their own ludicrous demotic, with our American second mate exclaiming, ‘Grease-us twice! What the hell you pesticatin me for,’ while Paulette, a young Frenchwoman, speaks in an entertaining but completely implausible Franglais – ‘you are just pleasanting me’, ‘he was quite bouleversed!’ The main narrative voice, meanwhile, is a hallucinogenic Anglo-Indian farrago that has been turned up to eleven, like Hobson-Jobson in an opium dream – the density of the following paragraph is not untypical:
I have a high tolerance for (indeed love of) opaque vocabulary, but even I found it wearing here – the effect is too extreme to come across as anything but parodic. Tellingly, Ghosh reserves a special thank-you in his afterword for the ‘dictionarists’ whose work he so assiduously plundered – not just Hobson-Jobson, but also a variety of colonial-era slang-lists and glossaries, like A Laskari Dictionary or Anglo-Indian Vocabulary of Nautical Terms and Phrases in English and Hindustani. It's hard not to wish he'd been a smidgen more sparing in how he used this research.
Though I found it strangely unsatisfying, there is a lot to like here, really – lush, gothic descriptions of an opium factory, a British jail, the hold of a slaving vessel are all well worth the cover price, and the characters are so bizarre that they rarely struggle to hold your interest. I had a lot of fun, but I don't feel in a mad rush to read the rest of the trilogy.
At first glance, it's the sort of writing that should really appeal to me, because Ghosh's entry into this world and to these characters is all linguistic. Every character has their own ludicrous demotic, with our American second mate exclaiming, ‘Grease-us twice! What the hell you pesticatin me for,’ while Paulette, a young Frenchwoman, speaks in an entertaining but completely implausible Franglais – ‘you are just pleasanting me’, ‘he was quite bouleversed!’ The main narrative voice, meanwhile, is a hallucinogenic Anglo-Indian farrago that has been turned up to eleven, like Hobson-Jobson in an opium dream – the density of the following paragraph is not untypical:
In this floating bazar there was everything a ship or a lascar might need: canvas by the gudge, spare jugboolaks and zambooras, coils of istingis and rup-yan, stacks of seetulpatty mats, tobacco by the batti, rolls of neem-twigs for the teeth, martabans of isabgol for constipation, and jars of columbo-root for dysentery: one ungainly gordower even had a choola going with a halwai frying up fresh jalebis.
I have a high tolerance for (indeed love of) opaque vocabulary, but even I found it wearing here – the effect is too extreme to come across as anything but parodic. Tellingly, Ghosh reserves a special thank-you in his afterword for the ‘dictionarists’ whose work he so assiduously plundered – not just Hobson-Jobson, but also a variety of colonial-era slang-lists and glossaries, like A Laskari Dictionary or Anglo-Indian Vocabulary of Nautical Terms and Phrases in English and Hindustani. It's hard not to wish he'd been a smidgen more sparing in how he used this research.
Though I found it strangely unsatisfying, there is a lot to like here, really – lush, gothic descriptions of an opium factory, a British jail, the hold of a slaving vessel are all well worth the cover price, and the characters are so bizarre that they rarely struggle to hold your interest. I had a lot of fun, but I don't feel in a mad rush to read the rest of the trilogy.
January 19, 2021
I give a high place to Ghosh among contemporary English Authors from India.
A saga of a ship, the Ibis, in the Indian Ocean and a beautiful depiction of local characters in a typical Indian way enthralled me and it kept me engaged with its characters and story. This is a sprawling novel and its historical treatment is just wonderful. I am sure, as Ghosh also acknowledges that he has toiled really hard, doing research of this certain historical period from the past. He has masterfully woven the economic hardship and elements of British imperialism of early 19th century India through his characters and scheme of the novel.
This book is very panoramic, vast, and rich in both suspense and satire.
The story revolves around the opium trade and encompasses poverty and riches, expectations, and despair in a very drunk language.
The imaginative capacities of Ghosh are always marvelous and it completely stands out. And the way he has written his sentences incorporating elements of local languages in this novel thoroughly engrossed me in the plot.
It consists of everything ... Love interests, village atrocities, betrayal, voyage, comic scenes, lots of water too, and many more elements.
During village weddings, it was always the women who sang when the bride was torn from her parent's embrace...Men remain silent..as if they were acknowledging, through their silence that they, as men, had no words to describe the pain of a child who is exiled from home.
"How will it pass.
This night of parting?"
A must-read polyphonic saga from Amitav Ghosh!
A saga of a ship, the Ibis, in the Indian Ocean and a beautiful depiction of local characters in a typical Indian way enthralled me and it kept me engaged with its characters and story. This is a sprawling novel and its historical treatment is just wonderful. I am sure, as Ghosh also acknowledges that he has toiled really hard, doing research of this certain historical period from the past. He has masterfully woven the economic hardship and elements of British imperialism of early 19th century India through his characters and scheme of the novel.
This book is very panoramic, vast, and rich in both suspense and satire.
The story revolves around the opium trade and encompasses poverty and riches, expectations, and despair in a very drunk language.
The imaginative capacities of Ghosh are always marvelous and it completely stands out. And the way he has written his sentences incorporating elements of local languages in this novel thoroughly engrossed me in the plot.
It consists of everything ... Love interests, village atrocities, betrayal, voyage, comic scenes, lots of water too, and many more elements.
During village weddings, it was always the women who sang when the bride was torn from her parent's embrace...Men remain silent..as if they were acknowledging, through their silence that they, as men, had no words to describe the pain of a child who is exiled from home.
"How will it pass.
This night of parting?"
A must-read polyphonic saga from Amitav Ghosh!
May 31, 2016
It has been said that the Ibis, a seafaring schooner, bound from Baltimore to Calcutta and destined to transport opium to China lay at the heart of this story and while I agree that the Ibis is central to the tale being told, the true heart of this saga and what ultimately brings together a diverse cast of characters is opium.
Rich in historical detail and panoramic views of land and sea this story is set in the 1830’s just on the cusp of the opium wars in China. Ghosh expertly weaves together the back stories of a colourful cast including among many others: a widowed opium farmer from the banks of the Ganges, the mulatto son of a Maryland freedwoman, the orphaned daughter of a French botanist, a bankrupt raja and an opium addict from China, while deftly imbuing the readers involvement in and concern for the fate of these people and their loved ones.
The narrative is peppered, most especially in the beginning, with slang, pidgin and many different dialects, which at first I found quite disconcerting and overwhelming as I struggled to understand every word. Fortunately though I realized soon enough that I was able to comprehend the gist of things just fine and decided henceforth to stop fretting about it and just allow the words and dialogue to wash over me.
Ghosh paints a very dark picture of humanity at this time and place, showcasing how governments in this case (British) and Indian lord it over others of lesser means and status, both on and off board, the great ship Ibis. While no doubt accurate it can be difficult to have a front row seat from which to view the often inhumane treatment that some people willingly and righteously inflict on others.
While I may have initially and through much of the reading of this first instalment been inclined to award this five full stars, the ending left much to be desired. Ghosh leaves the reader literally drenched and clinging to the storm swept deck of the Ibis, completely unaware of the immediate fate of the very people he has spent the last 500 odd pages making you care about. It is almost as though he stops telling his tale mid sentence. While this may have been okay for me now, given that I had the next book in the trilogy immediately available, I can well imagine how I might have felt had I not. Yes that would no doubt have quite successfully pissed me off.
So be forewarned and arm yourself with River of Smoke before you set sail on this journey over the black water which I highly recommend you take.
Rich in historical detail and panoramic views of land and sea this story is set in the 1830’s just on the cusp of the opium wars in China. Ghosh expertly weaves together the back stories of a colourful cast including among many others: a widowed opium farmer from the banks of the Ganges, the mulatto son of a Maryland freedwoman, the orphaned daughter of a French botanist, a bankrupt raja and an opium addict from China, while deftly imbuing the readers involvement in and concern for the fate of these people and their loved ones.
The narrative is peppered, most especially in the beginning, with slang, pidgin and many different dialects, which at first I found quite disconcerting and overwhelming as I struggled to understand every word. Fortunately though I realized soon enough that I was able to comprehend the gist of things just fine and decided henceforth to stop fretting about it and just allow the words and dialogue to wash over me.
Ghosh paints a very dark picture of humanity at this time and place, showcasing how governments in this case (British) and Indian lord it over others of lesser means and status, both on and off board, the great ship Ibis. While no doubt accurate it can be difficult to have a front row seat from which to view the often inhumane treatment that some people willingly and righteously inflict on others.
While I may have initially and through much of the reading of this first instalment been inclined to award this five full stars, the ending left much to be desired. Ghosh leaves the reader literally drenched and clinging to the storm swept deck of the Ibis, completely unaware of the immediate fate of the very people he has spent the last 500 odd pages making you care about. It is almost as though he stops telling his tale mid sentence. While this may have been okay for me now, given that I had the next book in the trilogy immediately available, I can well imagine how I might have felt had I not. Yes that would no doubt have quite successfully pissed me off.
So be forewarned and arm yourself with River of Smoke before you set sail on this journey over the black water which I highly recommend you take.
February 8, 2021
Transformation
This is the first epic instalment of the IBIS Trilogy. The story starts in 1838 on the eve of the first opium wars. Deeti is the central character of the story and she is the widow of an opium-addicted husband and avoids the immolation pyre (a tradition she should have undergone) to follow a vision of a journey on an ocean-going ship. The IBIS is that ship she boards to escape her fate and establish a new destiny in another land.
On the Ibis' travels to recruit coolies from Calcutta to the sugar estates of Mauritius, it assembles a fascinating group of characters, with Deeti, joined by Kalua a low-caste servant, Raja Neel Rattan a bankrupt landowner, Paulette a young French botanist and her Indian foster-brother Jodu, Zachary an American sailor, Benjamin Burnham an unscrupulous British merchant, and his agent Baboo Nob Kissin. The group face all sorts of adventures and trials and there is that inevitable cultural collision between the Indian caste system and the Western world. With the Raja, there is a wonderful gradual erosion of his lofty position, as he becomes bankrupt and his social standing starts to disintegrate. How will others now see and deal with him, especially the low-caste Indians?
The story is a powerful and dramatic tour through mid 19th century British-Indian history with fictional characters that feel so real. The insight into the opium trade and the British global plantation and slavery trade, are brought to life and are really quite shocking. The range of characters is diverse and creates great opportunities for very interesting clashes of culture and perspective.
The language details are incredibly authentic and a lot of research has gone into the traits of dialects and slang language, from sailors to servants, and from merchants to Rajas. For many, the dialogue is what makes this book really stand apart. With dialogue such as
I would recommend reading this book for the wonderful insights into that period and the imaginary portrayed with the characters and locations.
This is the first epic instalment of the IBIS Trilogy. The story starts in 1838 on the eve of the first opium wars. Deeti is the central character of the story and she is the widow of an opium-addicted husband and avoids the immolation pyre (a tradition she should have undergone) to follow a vision of a journey on an ocean-going ship. The IBIS is that ship she boards to escape her fate and establish a new destiny in another land.
On the Ibis' travels to recruit coolies from Calcutta to the sugar estates of Mauritius, it assembles a fascinating group of characters, with Deeti, joined by Kalua a low-caste servant, Raja Neel Rattan a bankrupt landowner, Paulette a young French botanist and her Indian foster-brother Jodu, Zachary an American sailor, Benjamin Burnham an unscrupulous British merchant, and his agent Baboo Nob Kissin. The group face all sorts of adventures and trials and there is that inevitable cultural collision between the Indian caste system and the Western world. With the Raja, there is a wonderful gradual erosion of his lofty position, as he becomes bankrupt and his social standing starts to disintegrate. How will others now see and deal with him, especially the low-caste Indians?
The story is a powerful and dramatic tour through mid 19th century British-Indian history with fictional characters that feel so real. The insight into the opium trade and the British global plantation and slavery trade, are brought to life and are really quite shocking. The range of characters is diverse and creates great opportunities for very interesting clashes of culture and perspective.
The language details are incredibly authentic and a lot of research has gone into the traits of dialects and slang language, from sailors to servants, and from merchants to Rajas. For many, the dialogue is what makes this book really stand apart. With dialogue such as
“‘Malum had cuttee he head?’ He said ‘What you wanchee this-piece boy? He blongi boat-bugger – no can learn ship-pijjin. Better he wailo chop-chop.’”I can appreciate the authenticity of the language and terms associated with sailing and Indian colloquialisms, but for me, it does interrupt the story so much that it slowed my reading considerably. Others may find this a real positive but I found it a little difficult going.
I would recommend reading this book for the wonderful insights into that period and the imaginary portrayed with the characters and locations.
June 2, 2021
donald harington recommended this book to me and now that he's gone, i can't even talk about it with him, and that is what i was thinking the whole time i was reading this book. if i hadn't had to read it for school, i would have waited until the other two books in the trilogy were published, so i could have had at them all at once, but again, school screws up my plans. it's an amazingly quick read - i was under the impression that i was supposed to have read it for yesterday's class so i zipped through it in a day and a half, which is way quicker than i read the known world, a less fun, and much shorter, book also for class. this book is just more vibrant - it, too, is a sprawling narrative with a huge list of characters, but this one has pirates, and drugs and a man growing boobs, so it's more familiar territory than slave-owning, for me. (shortest "review" ever, i know [you're welcome, dana:]) but i have to get back to my stupid paper about collection development and somehow write at least 5 more pages on a topic i feel i have already exhausted.
cliffs notes for this review: it is fun and good. read it.
come to my blog!
cliffs notes for this review: it is fun and good. read it.
come to my blog! 
February 28, 2016
Sjajan pisac, divan čovek i prelepa knjiga... Imala sam to zadovoljstvo da se dva puta sretnem s autorom, jednom na sajmu knjiga u Frankfurtu (kada sam kupila prava za njegove knjige) i kasnije na sajmu knjiga u Beogradu (kada već više nisam radila kod njegovog izdavača)... On toliko odiše toplinom i skromnošću da želite da se što duže zadržite u razgovoru s njim... Nažalost, kao da je izdavač odustao od njega jer poslednje 4 godine ništa njegovo nisu objavili, šteta... :(
May 6, 2015
If I had known this book was the first part of a trilogy - the other books as yet unwritten - and that the book was not complete unto itself, in other words, this saga is a serial rather than a series, I would probably not have bought it. And then I would have missed a book interesting for its historical period (the Opium Wars with China) about which I knew nothing, for its finely-drawn characters and general good-all-round storytelling.
This is really a 5-star book, but I am only giving it 4-stars because any serious review would be a spoiler, and this book is so good I wouldn't want to do that, and because I am pissed off at the author for finishing the story quite arbitarily and without having published the next chapter, the next book in the trilogy. All I can say to Amitav Ghosh, is hurry up man, I'm waiting, what happens next???
This is really a 5-star book, but I am only giving it 4-stars because any serious review would be a spoiler, and this book is so good I wouldn't want to do that, and because I am pissed off at the author for finishing the story quite arbitarily and without having published the next chapter, the next book in the trilogy. All I can say to Amitav Ghosh, is hurry up man, I'm waiting, what happens next???
November 15, 2016
The title of this book is so spot-on. While an interesting cast of characters populated the story of opium: from the empoverished villages of India, to the compromised users in China, with the movers and shakers of colonialism in between, only one element dictated the outcome, and that was poppies. These happy little flowers invaded every single aspect of land, sea and all things alive, even innocent animals. There was not a soul, psyche or physical body devoid of its impact in the nineteenth century.
I started this book two years ago but set it aside for a time which promised me more hours to proceed. The initial dialects, or should it be called forms of English, demanded concentration, but it formed such an intricate part of the plot, since it was a world in one story, that I wanted to be more prepared for the rest of the tale.
And what a compassionate, gripping saga it turned out to be! All the hours invested in this 500+ pages was worth it. Textured, colorful, atmospheric, picturesque, descriptive, gripping, holistic. It is just a perfect historical fiction experience.
However, after so much time spent in the lives of these intriguing characters, nobody wants to be left hanging at an abrupt, inconclusive cliffhanger ending. And that's where it lost a star. This book, as a stand-alone could have been a perfect read. Nevertheless, I already started the next book in this trilogy, so will catch up with my new family. Just be forewarned. You need to read all three.
The author must be congratulated. This is an exceptional piece of word art. A masterpiece indeed.
I started this book two years ago but set it aside for a time which promised me more hours to proceed. The initial dialects, or should it be called forms of English, demanded concentration, but it formed such an intricate part of the plot, since it was a world in one story, that I wanted to be more prepared for the rest of the tale.
And what a compassionate, gripping saga it turned out to be! All the hours invested in this 500+ pages was worth it. Textured, colorful, atmospheric, picturesque, descriptive, gripping, holistic. It is just a perfect historical fiction experience.
However, after so much time spent in the lives of these intriguing characters, nobody wants to be left hanging at an abrupt, inconclusive cliffhanger ending. And that's where it lost a star. This book, as a stand-alone could have been a perfect read. Nevertheless, I already started the next book in this trilogy, so will catch up with my new family. Just be forewarned. You need to read all three.
The author must be congratulated. This is an exceptional piece of word art. A masterpiece indeed.
September 14, 2009
A beautifully written historical novel about 1830's India in the grip of the opium trade. The characters are just as diverse as the British Empire itself, each with their own dialects and idiosyncracies, all brought together by the opium trade's many tentacled hands into the Ibis, on a voyage that will irrevocably changed them forever. The author has obviously done a massive amount of research into the period, and this novel is so rich with details that it could veritably serve as an encyclopaedia of early 19th century Indian life, both at sea and on land. However, this was never allowed to stifle the narrative, which deftly moves between a half-dozen main characters and different settings with ease. The novel is as chock-full of exciting incidents as a door-stopper 19th century adventure yarn, without abandoning a realism which makes it a compelling page-turner. The humorous episodes, largely supplied by the Falstaffian figure of Baboo Nob Kissin, enlivens the story between accounts of opium addiction, imprisonment and various corporal punishments.
Ghosh's experiment with Anglo-Indian dialects adds tremendously to the authenticity of the voices of the characters, although sometimes it could be rather distracting, especially in the earlier part of the story. There is a glossary ('The Chrestomaty') appended to the end of the book, which is quite useful to decipher the various lingos, but regretfully, not all of the words used is included. Obviously, it would be more helpful if all the words are included so that readers wouldn't miss any bit of dialogue.
Probably Ghosh's best and most impressive work to date. As this is said to be the first part of a projected trilogy, I'll be waiting with bated breath for the next installment.
Write quickly , Mr. Ghosh!
Ghosh's experiment with Anglo-Indian dialects adds tremendously to the authenticity of the voices of the characters, although sometimes it could be rather distracting, especially in the earlier part of the story. There is a glossary ('The Chrestomaty') appended to the end of the book, which is quite useful to decipher the various lingos, but regretfully, not all of the words used is included. Obviously, it would be more helpful if all the words are included so that readers wouldn't miss any bit of dialogue.
Probably Ghosh's best and most impressive work to date. As this is said to be the first part of a projected trilogy, I'll be waiting with bated breath for the next installment.
Write quickly , Mr. Ghosh!
October 18, 2022
The Opium Trade triangle (Britain-India-China) comes to life:
Preamble:
--I’m perpetually buried in nonfiction tomes. For me to try a new fiction, let alone a new trilogy, requires an exceptional confluence of interests. In this case:
i) Opium Trade triangle:
--This trilogy’s setting is the infamous triangle (India farming opium, smuggled into China for the profit of British financiers) where Britain finally resolved its chronic trade deficits with Asia (China/India were centers of traded goods) by destroying their state markets to establish British Empire’s “free trade” global capitalism (which includes the “coolie” indentured labour market to replace the slave market, at least in British colonial plantations): Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
ii) Global South perspectives:
--Having left China and been raised in Canada (another British conquest), historical perspectives are so skewed. Capitalism is conveniently seen as a domestic process (i.e. Britain’s Industrial Revolution; critiques are in this narrow context, ex. Charles Dickens) while slavery/settler colonialism/colonialism were separate processes (indeed, even contrary to capitalism): Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
--Same goes for today, where the rich nations are “capitalist” but never the poor nations they extract from (despite the latter being the most open to “free trade”/“free market” with their minimal governments: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions). Somehow there is no dependent relationships (imperialism). Socialism/communism is seen as the USSR which magically appeared and failed (never mind how they even survived multiple invasions and quickly became a superpower), so there is no alternative.
--The missing perspective here is colonization’s divide-and-rule and the thus the messy process of decolonization (The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World); instead of conveniently-ahistorical comparisons between Western colonial powers vs. countries decolonizing in the 20th century, consider the post-independence paths of India vs. China: Capitalism: A Ghost Story
iii) Opioids and society:
--What are the interactions of pain, relief, and addiction in the social context of history (ex. generational trauma/dislocation) and political economy (ex. boom/busts dislocating communities, from massive drug profits to rust belts/slums; advertising creating individualist consumer addiction, etc.)?
-Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
-Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions
-In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
-"Heroin on Prescription", "Neuro-Realism", "The Least Surrogate Outcome", "The Stigma Gene", "Brain-Imaging Studies Report More Positive Findings Than Their Numbers Can Support. This Is Fishy" in I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That.
iv) A story-teller to bring all this to life: my list here is the reverse of most fiction readers who come for the tapestry of characters and their personal relationships. Still, it was reading Ghosh in Will the Flower Slip Through the Asphalt: Writers Respond to Capitalist Climate Change that made me commit to this trilogy.
Highlights:
--It should be no surprise that my highlights are filled with glorious passages of British “free trade” “Enlightenment” (esp. evangelist opium trafficker Mr. Burnham) [bold emphases added]:
Preamble:
--I’m perpetually buried in nonfiction tomes. For me to try a new fiction, let alone a new trilogy, requires an exceptional confluence of interests. In this case:
i) Opium Trade triangle:
--This trilogy’s setting is the infamous triangle (India farming opium, smuggled into China for the profit of British financiers) where Britain finally resolved its chronic trade deficits with Asia (China/India were centers of traded goods) by destroying their state markets to establish British Empire’s “free trade” global capitalism (which includes the “coolie” indentured labour market to replace the slave market, at least in British colonial plantations): Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
ii) Global South perspectives:
--Having left China and been raised in Canada (another British conquest), historical perspectives are so skewed. Capitalism is conveniently seen as a domestic process (i.e. Britain’s Industrial Revolution; critiques are in this narrow context, ex. Charles Dickens) while slavery/settler colonialism/colonialism were separate processes (indeed, even contrary to capitalism): Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
--Same goes for today, where the rich nations are “capitalist” but never the poor nations they extract from (despite the latter being the most open to “free trade”/“free market” with their minimal governments: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions). Somehow there is no dependent relationships (imperialism). Socialism/communism is seen as the USSR which magically appeared and failed (never mind how they even survived multiple invasions and quickly became a superpower), so there is no alternative.
--The missing perspective here is colonization’s divide-and-rule and the thus the messy process of decolonization (The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World); instead of conveniently-ahistorical comparisons between Western colonial powers vs. countries decolonizing in the 20th century, consider the post-independence paths of India vs. China: Capitalism: A Ghost Story
iii) Opioids and society:
--What are the interactions of pain, relief, and addiction in the social context of history (ex. generational trauma/dislocation) and political economy (ex. boom/busts dislocating communities, from massive drug profits to rust belts/slums; advertising creating individualist consumer addiction, etc.)?
-Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
-Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions
-In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
-"Heroin on Prescription", "Neuro-Realism", "The Least Surrogate Outcome", "The Stigma Gene", "Brain-Imaging Studies Report More Positive Findings Than Their Numbers Can Support. This Is Fishy" in I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That.
iv) A story-teller to bring all this to life: my list here is the reverse of most fiction readers who come for the tapestry of characters and their personal relationships. Still, it was reading Ghosh in Will the Flower Slip Through the Asphalt: Writers Respond to Capitalist Climate Change that made me commit to this trilogy.
Highlights:
--It should be no surprise that my highlights are filled with glorious passages of British “free trade” “Enlightenment” (esp. evangelist opium trafficker Mr. Burnham) [bold emphases added]:
The suggestion startled Zachary: ‘D’you mean to use her [ship] as a slaver, sir? But have not your English laws outlawed that [slave] trade?’
‘That is true,’ Mr Burnham nodded. ‘Yes indeed they have, Reid. It’s sad but true that there are many who’ll stop at nothing to halt the march of human freedom.’ […] ‘Freedom, yes, exactly,’ said Mr Burnham. ‘Isn’t that what the mastery of the white man means for the lesser races? As I see it, Reid, the Africa trade was the greatest exercise in freedom since God led the children of Israel out of Egypt. Consider, Reid, the situation of a so-called slave in the Carolinas – is he not more free than his brethren in Africa, groaning under the rule of some dark tyrant?’ […] ‘And here you are carrying on like one of those Reformer fellows.’ […] ‘Lucky thing that particular disease hasn’t taken hold in your parts yet. Last bastion of liberty, I always say – slavery’ll be safe in America for a while yet. Where else could I have found a vessel like this, so perfectly suited for its cargo?’
‘Do you mean slaves, sir?’
Mr Burnham winced. ‘Why no, Reid. Not slaves – coolies. Have you not heard it said that when God closes one door he opens another? When the doors of freedom were closed to the African, the Lord opened them to a tribe that was yet more needful of it – the Asiatick.’ […] ‘A hold that was designed to carry slaves will serve just as well to carry coolies and convicts. Do you not think? We’ll put in a couple of heads and piss-dales, so the darkies needn’t always be fouling themselves. That should keep the inspectors happy.’
[…]
‘But Mr Burnham! Are you saying the British Empire will go to war to force opium on China?’
This elicited an instantaneous response from Mr Burnham, who placed his wineglass forcefully on the table. ‘Evidently you have mistaken my meaning, Raja Neel Rattan,’ he said. ‘The war, when it comes, will not be for opium. It will be for a principle: for freedom – for the freedom of trade and for the freedom of the Chinese people. Free Trade is a right conferred on Man by God, and its principles apply as much to opium as to any other article of trade. More so perhaps, since in its absence many millions of natives would be denied the lasting advantages of British influence.’ [...]
‘For the simple reason, Reid,’ said Mr Burnham patiently, ‘that British rule in India could not be sustained without opium – that is all there is to it, and let us not pretend otherwise. You are no doubt aware that in some years, the [East India] Company’s annual gains from opium are almost equal to the entire revenue of your own country, the United States? Do you imagine that British rule would be possible in this impoverished land if it were not for this source of wealth? And if we reflect on the benefits that British rule has conferred upon India, does it not follow that opium is this land’s greatest blessing? Does it not follow that it is our God-given duty to confer these benefits upon others?’ [...]
‘Does it not trouble you, Mr Burnham, to invoke God in the service of opium?’
‘Not in the slightest,’ said Mr Burnham, stroking his beard. ‘One of my countrymen has put the matter very simply: “Jesus Christ is Free Trade and Free Trade is Jesus Christ.” Truer words, I believe, were never spoken. If it is God’s will that opium be used as an instrument to open China to his teachings, then so be it. For myself, I confess I can see no reason why any Englishman should abet the Manchu tyrant in depriving the people of China of this miraculous substance.’
‘Do you mean opium?’ [...]
‘I certainly do,’ said Mr Burnham tartly. [...] ‘So you would do well to bear in mind that it would be well nigh impossible to practise modern medicine or surgery without such chemicals as morphine, codeine and narcotine – and these are but a few of the blessings derived from opium. [...] Why, one might even say that it is opium that has made this age of progress and industry possible: without it, the streets of London would be thronged with coughing, sleepless, incontinent multitudes. And if we consider all this, is it not apposite to ask if the Manchu tyrant has any right to deprive his helpless subjects of the advantages of progress? Do you think it pleases God to see us conspiring with that tyrant in depriving such a great number of people of this amazing gift?’
‘But Mr Burnham,’ Neel persisted, ‘is it not true that there is a great deal of addiction and intoxication in China? Surely such afflictions are not pleasing to our Creator?’
This nettled Mr Burnham. ‘These ills you mention, sir,’ he replied, ‘are merely aspects of the fallen nature of Man. Should you ever happen to walk through the rookeries of London, Raja Neel Rattan, you will see for yourself that there is as much addiction and intoxication in the gin shops of the Empire’s capital as there is in the dens of Canton [note: social history of addiction and social disruptions/alienation, ex. boom/bust’s rapid industrialization/capital flight]. Are we then to raze every tavern in the city? [...] No. Because the antidote for addiction lies not in bans enacted by Parliaments and emperors, but in the individual conscience – in every man’s awareness of his personal responsibility and his fear of God. As a Christian nation this is the single most important lesson we can offer to China [note the jump to individual consumerism, omitting social responsibility/regulation] – and I have no doubt that the message would be welcomed by the people of that unfortunate country, were they not prevented from hearing it by the cruel despot who holds sway over them. It is tyranny alone that is to blame for China’s degeneracy, sir. Merchants like myself are but the servants of Free Trade, which is as immutable as God’s commandments.’ [...] ‘And I might add, in this regard, that I do not think it sits well on a Raja of Raskhali to moralize on the subject of opium. [...] Well, for the very good reason that everything you possess is paid for by opium. [...]'
‘But I would not go to war for it, sir,’ Neel said, in a tone that matched Mr Burnham’s in its sharpness. ‘And I do not believe the Empire will either. You must not imagine that I am unaware of the part that Parliament plays in your country.’
‘Parliament?’ Mr Burnham laughed. ‘Parliament will not know of the war until it is over. Be assured, sir, that if such matters were left to Parliament there would be no Empire.’ [...]
‘Please do not speak to me, sir,’ said Mr Burnham, in the chilly tone of a man who wishes to snub a name-dropper, ‘of Mr Hume and Mr Locke. For I would have you know that I have been acquainted with them since they served on the Bengal Board of Revenue. I too have read every word they’ve written – even their report on sanitation. And as for Mr Hobbes, why I do believe I dined with him at my club just the other day.’ [British “Enlightenment”: David Hume, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes]
[…]
The Captain […] continued: ‘[…] For this you should know, gentlemen, that there is an unspoken pact between the white man and the natives who sustain his power in Hindoosthan – it is that in matters of marriage and procreation, like must be with like, and each must keep to their own. The day the natives lose faith in us, as the guarantors of the order of castes – that will be the day, gentlemen, that will doom our rule. This is the inviolable principle on which our authority is based – it is what makes our rule different from that of such degenerate and decayed peoples as the Spanish and Portuguese. Why, sir, if you wish to see what comes of miscegenation and mongrelism, you need only visit their possessions . . .’
February 18, 2022
"Sea of Poppies" is not just good, it is a perfect delight. And the first honest detailed story in my reader's century about how the British Empire got the world hooked on drug addiction.
After all, it all started from somewhere: the Chinese opium wars, about which everyone, at least out of the corner of their ear, had heard; the universal dependence on laudanum among the heroes of all significant authors, starting with the permanently stoned Lady Bertram in Miss Austen's Mansfield Park, ending with our beloved Anna Karenina. In the sense that literature is a mirror of life, and since Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Conan Doyle had characters with drug addiction, therefore, the phenomenon was widespread. Consequently, the scale of importation had to be such as could not be achieved in an artisanal way.
Amitav Ghosh in the first book of the "Ibis Trilogy" literally reveals the details of the technology. These were the methods by which fodder crops were displaced from peasant fields, and instead of them, poppy was planted in incredible quantities. A bed of laborious in care, capricious and requiring considerable care in the process of growing, a flower has been in every household before: to ease the pain, to help with insomnia - but no one thought of sowing all the fields with them. Before the corporate system put opium production on stream and voluntary and compulsory targeted lending to peasants began, which turned out to be, in fact, enslavement.
По Великому опиумному пути
И впрямь, этого требует гуманность. Стоит лишь подумать о несчастных индийских крестьянах — что с ними будет, если в Китае запретят продавать опий? Сейчас-то бедолаги еле сводят концы с концами, а уж тогда станут помирать толпами.
Не то, чтобы все и всегда фантомовские книги освещали мою жизнь вечным светом чистого разума, встречаются среди них такие, от каких не в восторге. А все же, в большинстве случаев, говоря "книги Фантом Пресс", мы подразумеваем "качественные книги". "Маковое море" не исключение, уточню лишь, что это не просто хорошо, это совершенный восторг. И первый на моем читательском веку честный подробный рассказ о том, как Британская империя подсадила мир на наркотическую зависимость.
Ведь откуда-то же все это начиналось: китайские опиумные войны, о которых все, хотя бы краем уха, слышали; поголовная зависимость от лауданума у героев всех значительных авторов, начиная с перманентно обдолбанной леди Бертрам в "Мэнсфилд-парке" мисс Остен, заканчивая нашей любимой Анной Карениной. В том смысле, что литература - зеркало жизни, и коль скоро у Диккенса, Уилки Коллинза, Конан-Дойла появлялись персонажи с наркотической зависимостью, стало быть, явление было распространенным. Следовательно, масштабы ввоза должны были быть такими, каких кустарным способом не достичь.
Амитав Гош в первой книге "Ибисной трилогии" буквально раскрывает подробности технологии. Вот такими методами с крестьянских полей вытеснялись кормовые сельскохозяйственные культуры, и вместо них насаждался в неимоверных количествах мак. Грядка трудоемкого в уходе, капризного и требующего немалых забот в процессе выращивания, цветка и прежде была в каждом хозяйстве: унять боль, помочь от бессонницы - но никому не приходило в голову засевать им все поля. До того, как корпоративная система поставила производство опия на поток и началось добровольно-принудительное целевое кредитование крестьян, оказавшееся, по сути, закабалением.
Обо всем этом есть в книге, и опиумная фабрика показана во всех отталкивающе уродливых и прекрасных, в смысле организации процесса, подробностях. И, разумеется, это не главное в ней. Амитав Гош говорит, что вообще не думал об опиуме, когда начал размышлять о книге. Куда больше его интересовали пути миграции индийцев по миру и причины, ведшие к ней. "Но это рассеяние началось именно в 1830-х годах, незадолго до первой опиумной войны, и самые первые иммигранты были из части Британской Индии, как раз из тех краев, которые Ост-Индская компания превратила в сплошные маковые поля." - уточняет писатель.
Тема, трудных путей миграции, основная в романе. Почему "Ибисная трилогия"? "Ибис" - это корабль, на котором сойдутся пути всех персонажей. Хотела сказать: "главных и второстепенных", но на самом деле, Гош как-то так пишет, что не значимых у него нет. Всякий герой главный в тот момент, когда авторская оптика направлена на него, а после ты уже не можешь развидеть сложной истории, стоящей за ним/ней.
Вот молодая женщина Дити, из числа тех крестьян, которые вынужденно выращивали на своих полях мак. Выданная замуж девчонкой за работника фабрики, в прошлом солдата, воевавшего за Империю, который оказался пристрастником (потрясающе точное слово для наркозависимого, и не могу не сказать о в целом восхитительном переводе Александра Софронова, язык книги замечательно хорош). Дити, которую в первую брачную ночь изнасиловал шурин, а после смерти мужа ей было предназначено сати - самосожжение на его погребальном костре. Дити, которую выкрал влюбленный в нее (взаимно) золотарь, но теперь оба они вне закона и единственное, что остается - завербоваться на Маврикий.
Вот раджа Нил, происхождения самого аристократического, утончен и образован, упитан и воспитан. и, по всему, должен прожить жизнь в холе и него, в окружении красивых вещей, чтобы никакие низкие материи не коснулись подошв его сандалий. Однако сложится все не так, ой, не так.
Вот Полетт Ламбер, дочь ботаника Пьера Ламбера из Франции, мать ее умерла родами и девочку воспитала индийская няня. Свободно говорит на двух европейских и недурно изъясняется на четырех индийских языках, сари для нее более привычно, чем платье. Умна, изобретательна, бедна и совершенно не приемлет мысли о принудительном счастье (например в браке с престарелым судьей, который когда-нибудь скопытится, оставив молодую жену наследницей).
Вот Захарий, метис из Америки, мама его была квартеронкой (на четверть черной) освобожденной рабыней, отец белым, следовательно Захарий октеронец. Не белый - уточнение, следовательно, претендовать на бремя и привилегии белого человека не может. Но выглядит совершенным европеидом, даже еще и посветлее большинства. Вступая на " Ибис" в должности корабельного плотника, причудами Фортуны и покровительством боцмана из ласкаров вознесен к должности второго помощника.
Это только четверка главных героев из пестрой шкатулки романных персонажей. А есть еще приказчик-кришнаит, который считает своей миссией построить храм Кришны, есть матросы-ласкары (совершенно уникальное в мореходстве явление), есть китаец-пристрастник, с которым Нилу придется свести тесное знакомство. И десятки других, чьи судьбы тесно, прочно и упоительно красиво сплетены романной тканью.
Номинация на Букер не была случайностью, "Маковое море" великая книга. Непростая, масштабная, захватывающе интересная. Вы не сможете не полюбить ее. Просто не сможете.
After all, it all started from somewhere: the Chinese opium wars, about which everyone, at least out of the corner of their ear, had heard; the universal dependence on laudanum among the heroes of all significant authors, starting with the permanently stoned Lady Bertram in Miss Austen's Mansfield Park, ending with our beloved Anna Karenina. In the sense that literature is a mirror of life, and since Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Conan Doyle had characters with drug addiction, therefore, the phenomenon was widespread. Consequently, the scale of importation had to be such as could not be achieved in an artisanal way.
Amitav Ghosh in the first book of the "Ibis Trilogy" literally reveals the details of the technology. These were the methods by which fodder crops were displaced from peasant fields, and instead of them, poppy was planted in incredible quantities. A bed of laborious in care, capricious and requiring considerable care in the process of growing, a flower has been in every household before: to ease the pain, to help with insomnia - but no one thought of sowing all the fields with them. Before the corporate system put opium production on stream and voluntary and compulsory targeted lending to peasants began, which turned out to be, in fact, enslavement.
По Великому опиумному пути
И впрямь, этого требует гуманность. Стоит лишь подумать о несчастных индийских крестьянах — что с ними будет, если в Китае запретят продавать опий? Сейчас-то бедолаги еле сводят концы с концами, а уж тогда станут помирать толпами.
Не то, чтобы все и всегда фантомовские книги освещали мою жизнь вечным светом чистого разума, встречаются среди них такие, от каких не в восторге. А все же, в большинстве случаев, говоря "книги Фантом Пресс", мы подразумеваем "качественные книги". "Маковое море" не исключение, уточню лишь, что это не просто хорошо, это совершенный восторг. И первый на моем читательском веку честный подробный рассказ о том, как Британская империя подсадила мир на наркотическую зависимость.
Ведь откуда-то же все это начиналось: китайские опиумные войны, о которых все, хотя бы краем уха, слышали; поголовная зависимость от лауданума у героев всех значительных авторов, начиная с перманентно обдолбанной леди Бертрам в "Мэнсфилд-парке" мисс Остен, заканчивая нашей любимой Анной Карениной. В том смысле, что литература - зеркало жизни, и коль скоро у Диккенса, Уилки Коллинза, Конан-Дойла появлялись персонажи с наркотической зависимостью, стало быть, явление было распространенным. Следовательно, масштабы ввоза должны были быть такими, каких кустарным способом не достичь.
Амитав Гош в первой книге "Ибисной трилогии" буквально раскрывает подробности технологии. Вот такими методами с крестьянских полей вытеснялись кормовые сельскохозяйственные культуры, и вместо них насаждался в неимоверных количествах мак. Грядка трудоемкого в уходе, капризного и требующего немалых забот в процессе выращивания, цветка и прежде была в каждом хозяйстве: унять боль, помочь от бессонницы - но никому не приходило в голову засевать им все поля. До того, как корпоративная система поставила производство опия на поток и началось добровольно-принудительное целевое кредитование крестьян, оказавшееся, по сути, закабалением.
Обо всем этом есть в книге, и опиумная фабрика показана во всех отталкивающе уродливых и прекрасных, в смысле организации процесса, подробностях. И, разумеется, это не главное в ней. Амитав Гош говорит, что вообще не думал об опиуме, когда начал размышлять о книге. Куда больше его интересовали пути миграции индийцев по миру и причины, ведшие к ней. "Но это рассеяние началось именно в 1830-х годах, незадолго до первой опиумной войны, и самые первые иммигранты были из части Британской Индии, как раз из тех краев, которые Ост-Индская компания превратила в сплошные маковые поля." - уточняет писатель.
Тема, трудных путей миграции, основная в романе. Почему "Ибисная трилогия"? "Ибис" - это корабль, на котором сойдутся пути всех персонажей. Хотела сказать: "главных и второстепенных", но на самом деле, Гош как-то так пишет, что не значимых у него нет. Всякий герой главный в тот момент, когда авторская оптика направлена на него, а после ты уже не можешь развидеть сложной истории, стоящей за ним/ней.
Вот молодая женщина Дити, из числа тех крестьян, которые вынужденно выращивали на своих полях мак. Выданная замуж девчонкой за работника фабрики, в прошлом солдата, воевавшего за Империю, который оказался пристрастником (потрясающе точное слово для наркозависимого, и не могу не сказать о в целом восхитительном переводе Александра Софронова, язык книги замечательно хорош). Дити, которую в первую брачную ночь изнасиловал шурин, а после смерти мужа ей было предназначено сати - самосожжение на его погребальном костре. Дити, которую выкрал влюбленный в нее (взаимно) золотарь, но теперь оба они вне закона и единственное, что остается - завербоваться на Маврикий.
Вот раджа Нил, происхождения самого аристократического, утончен и образован, упитан и воспитан. и, по всему, должен прожить жизнь в холе и него, в окружении красивых вещей, чтобы никакие низкие материи не коснулись подошв его сандалий. Однако сложится все не так, ой, не так.
Вот Полетт Ламбер, дочь ботаника Пьера Ламбера из Франции, мать ее умерла родами и девочку воспитала индийская няня. Свободно говорит на двух европейских и недурно изъясняется на четырех индийских языках, сари для нее более привычно, чем платье. Умна, изобретательна, бедна и совершенно не приемлет мысли о принудительном счастье (например в браке с престарелым судьей, который когда-нибудь скопытится, оставив молодую жену наследницей).
Вот Захарий, метис из Америки, мама его была квартеронкой (на четверть черной) освобожденной рабыней, отец белым, следовательно Захарий октеронец. Не белый - уточнение, следовательно, претендовать на бремя и привилегии белого человека не может. Но выглядит совершенным европеидом, даже еще и посветлее большинства. Вступая на " Ибис" в должности корабельного плотника, причудами Фортуны и покровительством боцмана из ласкаров вознесен к должности второго помощника.
Это только четверка главных героев из пестрой шкатулки романных персонажей. А есть еще приказчик-кришнаит, который считает своей миссией построить храм Кришны, есть матросы-ласкары (совершенно уникальное в мореходстве явление), есть китаец-пристрастник, с которым Нилу придется свести тесное знакомство. И десятки других, чьи судьбы тесно, прочно и упоительно красиво сплетены романной тканью.
Номинация на Букер не была случайностью, "Маковое море" великая книга. Непростая, масштабная, захватывающе интересная. Вы не сможете не полюбить ее. Просто не сможете.
May 24, 2017
And this is how you write a historical fiction.
December 17, 2018
What an interesting and unusual read!
Sea Poppies is set in 1830 during the turbulent world of the the Opium trade.
A large section of this book is set in India, with the final quarter being set on board a schooner called the Ibis.
The novel has a large cast of characters ..... you could say too many at times. We hear the stories of Zachary sailing from Boston to Calcutta in the Ibis, Raja Neel Rattan Halder’s fall from grace, a French girl Paulette’s unusual childhood growing up with a servant’s child as her best friend, Deeti who is married to an opium addict in a small rural village and the wonderfully named Nob Kissin Pander a gomusta (agent responsible for shipping migrants) with his strange obsessions and physical transformation ............ as well as many others.
Eventually as their stories are told they board the Ibis, setting sail for Mauritius.
The themes that interested me the most were the caste system in India, the harshness of the opium trade, British colonisation and the possibility of reinventing oneself if freed from social constraints.
There is drama, betrayal, a fall from grace, an attempt at Sati (a wife joining her husband on his funeral pyre), storms at sea, depictions prison life, violence and adventure.
The dialogue is amazing, it is colourful and whirls along with native words thrown carelessly into the sentences. I feel that Amitav Ghosh is really having fun with the languages and the many colloquialisms he uses. At the beginning I felt this slowed my reading pace but I soon settled into the writing.
This is the first book in the Ibis Trilogy and I’m really looking forward to reading the next instalment!
Sea Poppies is set in 1830 during the turbulent world of the the Opium trade.
A large section of this book is set in India, with the final quarter being set on board a schooner called the Ibis.
The novel has a large cast of characters ..... you could say too many at times. We hear the stories of Zachary sailing from Boston to Calcutta in the Ibis, Raja Neel Rattan Halder’s fall from grace, a French girl Paulette’s unusual childhood growing up with a servant’s child as her best friend, Deeti who is married to an opium addict in a small rural village and the wonderfully named Nob Kissin Pander a gomusta (agent responsible for shipping migrants) with his strange obsessions and physical transformation ............ as well as many others.
Eventually as their stories are told they board the Ibis, setting sail for Mauritius.
The themes that interested me the most were the caste system in India, the harshness of the opium trade, British colonisation and the possibility of reinventing oneself if freed from social constraints.
There is drama, betrayal, a fall from grace, an attempt at Sati (a wife joining her husband on his funeral pyre), storms at sea, depictions prison life, violence and adventure.
The dialogue is amazing, it is colourful and whirls along with native words thrown carelessly into the sentences. I feel that Amitav Ghosh is really having fun with the languages and the many colloquialisms he uses. At the beginning I felt this slowed my reading pace but I soon settled into the writing.
This is the first book in the Ibis Trilogy and I’m really looking forward to reading the next instalment!
February 26, 2018
'Sea of Poppies' is a story of indentured laborers. We see all sorts of Indians huddled together in a ship called Ibis. We get to know the story primarily through its main characters Kalua and his wife Deeti. On this ship, there are people of different persuasions and background. Kalua and Deeti are no exception in this.
Both Kalua and Deeti are running away from persecution. They have secrets. Kalua is a lower caste man, and Deeti a young widow. Soon after her husband dies, her in-laws want to do 'Sati' on her– which means they want to burn Deeti along with their son's body. Kalua, an able-bodied man saves her from the pyre and sails her through to a save destination. Deeti, though never happy in her marriage, happily accepts the unexpected change and agrees to be Kalua's wife. Caste transgressions are unheard of especially in rural India even today; one can imagine what it would be like then– two centuries ago. Therefore, they run and run and somehow finds themselves on Ibis in a pursuit of refuge where the demons of caste cannot seek them.
One of the chief flaws in the novel is the depiction of the scene in which Kalua, though able-bodied and powerful, a low caste someone who has always lived on the periphery, saves Deeti from the pyre and disappears with her in broad daylight amidst a vast crowd of people. This becomes even more improbable that Kalua despite his immense strength can initiate such a fete. Just prior to this incident, quite in the beginning, we see how is brutally treated, insulted and almost raped by a few upper caste men in his village. So the whole scene in which Kalua acts like a James Bond reeks of a third-rate Bollywood film.
Now, what is good about the book: its historical details, and varied themes. For instance, globalization plays a key role in the book. The movement of people, of good, culture, mingling of languages all play out on Ibis. In addition to themes of identity, alienation that emerge in the lives of several characters. There are also claims in the book that might seem untrue even to modern Indians but are historical facts such as that two centuries ago the Indian seamanship is the most advanced and sophisticated in the world.
History is a strange creature that cannot be tamed into neat categories. This whole notion that British cruelly exploited Indians and India–though true–is not the Truth. In the novel, we see how vast majority of Indians are themselves engage in selling, managing, exploiting and trading the already impoverished Indians. And in hinterlands, a mass of the population is hugely burdened with local conflicts and regional politics, and is seeped in gender and caste-related atrocities.
The book shows us unpleasing and queer dimensions of the world of yore and manages to draw parallels with the contemporary world. Globalization, with all its pluses and minuses, started much earlier than what we like to believe.
Both Kalua and Deeti are running away from persecution. They have secrets. Kalua is a lower caste man, and Deeti a young widow. Soon after her husband dies, her in-laws want to do 'Sati' on her– which means they want to burn Deeti along with their son's body. Kalua, an able-bodied man saves her from the pyre and sails her through to a save destination. Deeti, though never happy in her marriage, happily accepts the unexpected change and agrees to be Kalua's wife. Caste transgressions are unheard of especially in rural India even today; one can imagine what it would be like then– two centuries ago. Therefore, they run and run and somehow finds themselves on Ibis in a pursuit of refuge where the demons of caste cannot seek them.
One of the chief flaws in the novel is the depiction of the scene in which Kalua, though able-bodied and powerful, a low caste someone who has always lived on the periphery, saves Deeti from the pyre and disappears with her in broad daylight amidst a vast crowd of people. This becomes even more improbable that Kalua despite his immense strength can initiate such a fete. Just prior to this incident, quite in the beginning, we see how is brutally treated, insulted and almost raped by a few upper caste men in his village. So the whole scene in which Kalua acts like a James Bond reeks of a third-rate Bollywood film.
Now, what is good about the book: its historical details, and varied themes. For instance, globalization plays a key role in the book. The movement of people, of good, culture, mingling of languages all play out on Ibis. In addition to themes of identity, alienation that emerge in the lives of several characters. There are also claims in the book that might seem untrue even to modern Indians but are historical facts such as that two centuries ago the Indian seamanship is the most advanced and sophisticated in the world.
History is a strange creature that cannot be tamed into neat categories. This whole notion that British cruelly exploited Indians and India–though true–is not the Truth. In the novel, we see how vast majority of Indians are themselves engage in selling, managing, exploiting and trading the already impoverished Indians. And in hinterlands, a mass of the population is hugely burdened with local conflicts and regional politics, and is seeped in gender and caste-related atrocities.
The book shows us unpleasing and queer dimensions of the world of yore and manages to draw parallels with the contemporary world. Globalization, with all its pluses and minuses, started much earlier than what we like to believe.
July 27, 2015
This book really disappointed me. I have always loved Ghosh's books, so I would have to call this a big let down. The book needs a glossary listing Indian terms. Perhaps the dialog was made more authentic through these terms, but it also became impossible to understand the what was being said. Most paragraphs had terms that were not defined - neither in Wikipedia or any dictionary I could find on the net. Only a few of the terms can be found on the net. A few I knew from previous reading, but MANY I could only guess at from the context. This was very annoying and wrecked the book for me. I did not enjoy the plot. In addition,, the book synopsis here on GoodReads is not correct. The purpose of the voyage of the schooner Ibis was NOT to fight the 19th century's opium wars. Not at all! Finally, I could not become attached to any of the characters since often I had difficulty understanding what they were saying. A big disappointment from Ghosh. Read his earlier books; they are very good.
November 30, 2010
This is quite a book and I have given it five stars because it is brilliant, well researched, beautifully written and right up there with some of the very best, similar in some ways, for example, to the Master and Commander series. However, I have a few observations and comments to make. The fat lady hasn't quite sung yet.
1. This is the first book in a trilogy. It ends with only two loose ends tied of dozens and dozens. There was some retribution in the end of the book but it came at a huge cost. I became emotionally tied to many of the characters and I love many of them and yet I don't think I ever shed a tear. I may, however, in the future.
2. One of the main themes of the book was to show how unfairly governments (mostly the Brits), rulers, the caste system, people of greater status over those of lesser means, powerful businessmen, captains and officers on board the ship and many others, rule over other people. Although I believe this picture was a very accurate picture of reality, it's sometimes almost too much to bear. We have to go through every painful detail of every evil deed and the world almost seems like it's literally hell with very little heaven. That said, there are some very heroic and excellent moments of sacrifice and good. But it's primarily a very dark picture of much of humanity, at least of that era of India which was under British rule at the time.
3. The book is full of slang, pigeon (pidgin), and many different languages and dialects that are all mixed into the text. Rather than spending a lot of time trying to sort through that, it's better to plough through it all because much of it isn't very important. It has it's own rhythm and authenticity, but I actually feel that it was a bit showy and even a little lazy. I remember one page early on in the book that had maybe twenty different Indian words for different foods, clothing and other non English words and I thought, how ridiculous. Is this written primarily for those few people who speak both languages and know the historical usages of these words? Oh you're such a scholar, Ghosh. I think an excellent addition to the book would be footmarks that clearly outline the usage of these words. He started doing that with the "Chrestomathy" in the the back of the book but I found it fairly unhelpful unless I were to make a real study out of it like he did.
4. Although there is a lot of fairly graphic sex, violence and R rated material, it doesn't come across as X rated. It is couched in kind of a conservative and even naive approach to the activities that are going on. It seems to me that Ghosh's Indian roots and background come out more here, especially in the way he portrays sex and relationships, than in some of the obvious ways such as his phrasing and use of certain words, etc. His English is just excellent. But the almost scholarly and then practiced talk about crude things going on seems embarrassing to him but necessary to include to make it all appropriately told. I had to read a couple of pages twice or three times to make sure he is telling us that one of the main characters is gay (although don't think of modern day gay, think more of a twisted, uneducated creep who has never known what a male/female relationship is and is satisfied and trained to like whatever sex is between men in prison or on long voyages at sea). I would be interested to get a gay man's take on this.
I have a lot of other thoughts that would be fun to discuss with someone who has recently read the book. Much of my judgments are held until I read the next two books. This could end out to be one of the top historical fiction series ever written. Or not.
I think the rave reviews are deserved and that this book is a huge accomplishment. I'm looking forward to reading book two. I've searched the internet for updates on the second book. If you have one, please let me know. I wish it were available now.
1. This is the first book in a trilogy. It ends with only two loose ends tied of dozens and dozens. There was some retribution in the end of the book but it came at a huge cost. I became emotionally tied to many of the characters and I love many of them and yet I don't think I ever shed a tear. I may, however, in the future.
2. One of the main themes of the book was to show how unfairly governments (mostly the Brits), rulers, the caste system, people of greater status over those of lesser means, powerful businessmen, captains and officers on board the ship and many others, rule over other people. Although I believe this picture was a very accurate picture of reality, it's sometimes almost too much to bear. We have to go through every painful detail of every evil deed and the world almost seems like it's literally hell with very little heaven. That said, there are some very heroic and excellent moments of sacrifice and good. But it's primarily a very dark picture of much of humanity, at least of that era of India which was under British rule at the time.
3. The book is full of slang, pigeon (pidgin), and many different languages and dialects that are all mixed into the text. Rather than spending a lot of time trying to sort through that, it's better to plough through it all because much of it isn't very important. It has it's own rhythm and authenticity, but I actually feel that it was a bit showy and even a little lazy. I remember one page early on in the book that had maybe twenty different Indian words for different foods, clothing and other non English words and I thought, how ridiculous. Is this written primarily for those few people who speak both languages and know the historical usages of these words? Oh you're such a scholar, Ghosh. I think an excellent addition to the book would be footmarks that clearly outline the usage of these words. He started doing that with the "Chrestomathy" in the the back of the book but I found it fairly unhelpful unless I were to make a real study out of it like he did.
4. Although there is a lot of fairly graphic sex, violence and R rated material, it doesn't come across as X rated. It is couched in kind of a conservative and even naive approach to the activities that are going on. It seems to me that Ghosh's Indian roots and background come out more here, especially in the way he portrays sex and relationships, than in some of the obvious ways such as his phrasing and use of certain words, etc. His English is just excellent. But the almost scholarly and then practiced talk about crude things going on seems embarrassing to him but necessary to include to make it all appropriately told. I had to read a couple of pages twice or three times to make sure he is telling us that one of the main characters is gay (although don't think of modern day gay, think more of a twisted, uneducated creep who has never known what a male/female relationship is and is satisfied and trained to like whatever sex is between men in prison or on long voyages at sea). I would be interested to get a gay man's take on this.
I have a lot of other thoughts that would be fun to discuss with someone who has recently read the book. Much of my judgments are held until I read the next two books. This could end out to be one of the top historical fiction series ever written. Or not.
I think the rave reviews are deserved and that this book is a huge accomplishment. I'm looking forward to reading book two. I've searched the internet for updates on the second book. If you have one, please let me know. I wish it were available now.
May 28, 2015
For all the hype it has generated, this book was sorely disappointing. It is a very fast read, and a good adventure yarn...and that is all. From a booker prize nominee, I expected something more.
The characters lack depth. The bad guys are evil, the good guys good. And some, like Nob Kissin Pander, are ludicrous. The story goes at a breakneck pace without stopping for a moment to consider, rather like a well directed bollywood movie (only the songs and dance numbers were missing)! There is a lack of atmosphere. All the while I found myself comparing this novel (to its disadvantage) to Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet, which was poignant in its capture of the dying days of the British Raj.
And lastly...this is not a novel, but a part of one. The story stops too abruptly.
The characters lack depth. The bad guys are evil, the good guys good. And some, like Nob Kissin Pander, are ludicrous. The story goes at a breakneck pace without stopping for a moment to consider, rather like a well directed bollywood movie (only the songs and dance numbers were missing)! There is a lack of atmosphere. All the while I found myself comparing this novel (to its disadvantage) to Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet, which was poignant in its capture of the dying days of the British Raj.
And lastly...this is not a novel, but a part of one. The story stops too abruptly.
December 7, 2010
Deeti, Kalua, Zachary, Serang Ali, Paulette, Neel and Baboo Kissin, I am afraid I have to abruptly dismiss our modest tea party. The biscuits are soggy, sandwiches are musty and the Darjeeling brew is insipid. So slip me some "black tar" and I’m off to the land of nocturnal rainbows bedecked with copulating gremlins.
Sea of Poppies irrespective to the fact of it being the preamble to Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy and the onset ambience of the epic Anglo-Chinese Opium War,falls short in capturing my nomadic temperament through its plain narrative and wobbly interpretation of its characters. Ghosh enthusiasts would decidedly contradict this retort labeling my Machiavellian analysis as act of lunacy or vernacularism (as this book was highly recommended by several 'neighborhood bookworms'). With the prospects of burning torches likely to be flung, SCREW YOU FUCKERS!!!! Comprehending this manuscript was a dreary stupor compelling me to seek solace in Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.
Sea of Poppies irrespective to the fact of it being the preamble to Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy and the onset ambience of the epic Anglo-Chinese Opium War,falls short in capturing my nomadic temperament through its plain narrative and wobbly interpretation of its characters. Ghosh enthusiasts would decidedly contradict this retort labeling my Machiavellian analysis as act of lunacy or vernacularism (as this book was highly recommended by several 'neighborhood bookworms'). With the prospects of burning torches likely to be flung, SCREW YOU FUCKERS!!!! Comprehending this manuscript was a dreary stupor compelling me to seek solace in Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.
January 10, 2020
"Sea of Poppies" introduced a world I did not really know existed, a world where British people reduced and degraded an entire continent of people in their greed.
This is the story of several of those people, some of them connected tangentially, some of them not at all who end up together struggling for life and dignity aboard the ship Ibis in the Bay of Bengal.
I was so caught up in the story I was not ready for it to end. Good thing it is part of a trilogy.
This is the story of several of those people, some of them connected tangentially, some of them not at all who end up together struggling for life and dignity aboard the ship Ibis in the Bay of Bengal.
I was so caught up in the story I was not ready for it to end. Good thing it is part of a trilogy.
August 2, 2016
I thoroughly enjoyed this trilogy for its rich historical detail and its playfulness with language. Ghosh writes of the opium trade and the First Opium War. He’s clearly done a ton of research into all aspects of the trade, and it was a real history lesson not only on the events of the First Opium War but also the society, culture and economics associated with the opium trade.
This is simultaneously the trilogy’s strength and its weakness. The opium trade and the First Opium War are the primary focus of the trilogy, and the story and its characters are shoehorned into a structure designed to cover all the main effects of the trade and the war, and especially its effect on Indians. Each instalment of the trilogy covers one key part of the opium trade and war. And, notwithstanding the dozens of subplots, in each instalment there are two main stories fitted into a setting that best allows Ghosh to talk about that part of the trade and war that the instalment is dealing with. The two main stories act as a counterpoint to each other: one is love story, and the other is a story of a life affected by the opium trade and war.
The entire trilogy can be diagrammed as follows:
Sea of Poppies
Historical focus: The cultivation and manufacture of opium forced upon Indian peasants by the East India Company
Main story 1: Love story of Deeti and Kahlua
Main story 2: The framing and imprisonment of Neel Rattan
River of Smoke
Historical focus: The smuggling and trading of opium in China, in particular the Parsi merchant community in China selling their small quota of opium alongside the far greater trades allotted to the English
Main story 1: Love story of Robin Chinnery and Jacqua
Main story 2: The attempt by Bahram Modi to boost his family fortunes
Flood of Fire
Historical focus: The First Opium War and the seizure of Hong Kong, in particular the Indian soliders that helped to fight the opium wars against the Chinese
Main story 1: The love quadrangle of Cathay Burnham, Captain Mee, Zachary Reid, and Paulette Lambert
Main story 2: Kesri's experiences as a solider in the First Opium War
I loved all the history but how you feel about the trilogy, especially its second and third instalments, will depend greatly on how you feel about the historical taking precedence over the purely fictional. The artificiality of the structure is less evident in the first. But if you go into the second and third volumes expecting to see the stories of the characters in the first volume continue and unfold, you are going to be sorely disappointed.
As the diagram indicates, the key characters differ in each instalment and while Ghosh does more or less resolve the plot threads of each of the characters he introduces, these can be dealt with in a rushed and perfunctory fashion. For example, Robin Chinnery, a main focus in the second novel, is dealt with in a single line in the last novel. Other characters like Jodhu and Serang Ali, so important in the first novel, are reintroduced in the last novel but in an entirely half-hearted manner. In a sense, the characters are the backdrop to the history rather than the other way round.
For all its historical focus, the driving force behind his tale is his anger about the greed and rapacity of capitalism. In the light of Trump, a presidential candidate whose main boast was wanting to be greedy for America, the following choice quotes feel a little too terrifyingly relevant to our time:
This is simultaneously the trilogy’s strength and its weakness. The opium trade and the First Opium War are the primary focus of the trilogy, and the story and its characters are shoehorned into a structure designed to cover all the main effects of the trade and the war, and especially its effect on Indians. Each instalment of the trilogy covers one key part of the opium trade and war. And, notwithstanding the dozens of subplots, in each instalment there are two main stories fitted into a setting that best allows Ghosh to talk about that part of the trade and war that the instalment is dealing with. The two main stories act as a counterpoint to each other: one is love story, and the other is a story of a life affected by the opium trade and war.
The entire trilogy can be diagrammed as follows:
Sea of Poppies
Historical focus: The cultivation and manufacture of opium forced upon Indian peasants by the East India Company
Main story 1: Love story of Deeti and Kahlua
Main story 2: The framing and imprisonment of Neel Rattan
River of Smoke
Historical focus: The smuggling and trading of opium in China, in particular the Parsi merchant community in China selling their small quota of opium alongside the far greater trades allotted to the English
Main story 1: Love story of Robin Chinnery and Jacqua
Main story 2: The attempt by Bahram Modi to boost his family fortunes
Flood of Fire
Historical focus: The First Opium War and the seizure of Hong Kong, in particular the Indian soliders that helped to fight the opium wars against the Chinese
Main story 1: The love quadrangle of Cathay Burnham, Captain Mee, Zachary Reid, and Paulette Lambert
Main story 2: Kesri's experiences as a solider in the First Opium War
I loved all the history but how you feel about the trilogy, especially its second and third instalments, will depend greatly on how you feel about the historical taking precedence over the purely fictional. The artificiality of the structure is less evident in the first. But if you go into the second and third volumes expecting to see the stories of the characters in the first volume continue and unfold, you are going to be sorely disappointed.
As the diagram indicates, the key characters differ in each instalment and while Ghosh does more or less resolve the plot threads of each of the characters he introduces, these can be dealt with in a rushed and perfunctory fashion. For example, Robin Chinnery, a main focus in the second novel, is dealt with in a single line in the last novel. Other characters like Jodhu and Serang Ali, so important in the first novel, are reintroduced in the last novel but in an entirely half-hearted manner. In a sense, the characters are the backdrop to the history rather than the other way round.
For all its historical focus, the driving force behind his tale is his anger about the greed and rapacity of capitalism. In the light of Trump, a presidential candidate whose main boast was wanting to be greedy for America, the following choice quotes feel a little too terrifyingly relevant to our time:
… he remembered that Ma Taramony had always said that the present era – Kaliyuga, the age of apocalypse – was but a time of wanting, an epoch of unbounded craving in which humankind would be ruled by the demons of greed and desire. It would end only when Lord Vishnu descended to the earth in his avatar as the destroyer, Kalki, to bring in a new cycle of time, Satya Yuga, the age of truth. Ma Taramony had often said that in order to hasten the coming of the Kalki a great host of beings would appear on earth, to quicken the march of greed and desire.That view of capitalism is one I can definitely sympathise with. Highly recommended, but with the above caveats.
…
…It is the destiny of the English to bring about the world’s end; they are but instruments of the will of the gods… inside [the warship, the Nemesis,] burns the fire that will awaken the demons of greed that are hidden in all human beings. That is why the English have come to China and to Hindustan: these two lands are so populous that if their greed is aroused they can consume the whole world. Today that great devouring has begun. It will end only when all of humanity, joined together in a great frenzy of greed, has eaten up the earth, the air, the sky. ….
June 21, 2010
I almost considered not reviewing this, but I’d made a resolution to myself that I would post about every book I read for the sake of crystallising what I took away from it. To put this book in perspective: I’ve started reading with post-it flags to mark passages I love or things that I want to come back to when I write about it later. I didn’t mark a single passage in Sea of Poppies. Not one post-it flag. The only thing I considered marking was a passage that was hilariously difficult to follow.
I’m not saying it was terrible, but my overriding impression of it revolved around the use of outdated language. I assume what happened was that Ghosh spent months researching the precise way that certain classes of people would have spoken at the time of the book’s continuity. But rather than enhancing the realism of the book, it (a) feels like Ghosh got too bogged down in the details of language instead of making the character bounce off the page; and (b) completely blocks your ability to understand what’s happening in parts. E.g:
That’s just one example, and the first one that I came across while flicking through the book. I don’t see what the point is of a list like that is, other than setting a scene. And if the words themselves don’t correspond to an image (e.g. if you have no idea what the words mean), then it fails in that job. And to be honest, it takes quite a bit of digging to discover what these words mean (“dumbpoke” apparently correlates to “dum pukht”, or “slow cook”. “Petersilly” might be “petersillie”, which is German for parsley - when these are English people living in India, the reasons for their using German words for spices is beyond me. And I still have no translation for “bobachee-connah” -I assume it means something like ‘master of the house’, but any googling leads me to quotes from the book itself). And in some cases, they’re entirely useless (in this passage, “muttongosht” is used when “mutton” could suffice).
We’re talking here about a 470 page book that’s written in this manner. It’s frustrating. I was always told that the more invisible the writing style, the better. If writing sutures you into the milieu of the book and allows you to forget that you’re even reading altogether, then that’s ideal. Sometimes I’m okay with a noticeable writing style if it’s clever (e.g. Special Topics in Calamity Physics), but if I notice it and I dislike it, I suddenly find it difficult to lose myself in, or even enjoy the book. Unfortunately, that was the case here.
I’m not saying it was terrible, but my overriding impression of it revolved around the use of outdated language. I assume what happened was that Ghosh spent months researching the precise way that certain classes of people would have spoken at the time of the book’s continuity. But rather than enhancing the realism of the book, it (a) feels like Ghosh got too bogged down in the details of language instead of making the character bounce off the page; and (b) completely blocks your ability to understand what’s happening in parts. E.g:
There was green turtle soup, served artfully in the animals’ shells, a Bobotie pie, a dumbpoke of muttongosht, a tureen of Burdwaun stew, concocted from boiled hens and pickled oysters, a foogath of venison, a dish of pomfrets, soused in vinegar and sprinkled with petersilly, a Vinthaleaux of beef, with all the accompaniments, and platters of tiny roasted ortolans and pigeons, with the birds set out in the arrowhead shapes of flocks in flight. The table’s centrepiece was a favourite of the Bethel bobachee-connah.
That’s just one example, and the first one that I came across while flicking through the book. I don’t see what the point is of a list like that is, other than setting a scene. And if the words themselves don’t correspond to an image (e.g. if you have no idea what the words mean), then it fails in that job. And to be honest, it takes quite a bit of digging to discover what these words mean (“dumbpoke” apparently correlates to “dum pukht”, or “slow cook”. “Petersilly” might be “petersillie”, which is German for parsley - when these are English people living in India, the reasons for their using German words for spices is beyond me. And I still have no translation for “bobachee-connah” -I assume it means something like ‘master of the house’, but any googling leads me to quotes from the book itself). And in some cases, they’re entirely useless (in this passage, “muttongosht” is used when “mutton” could suffice).
We’re talking here about a 470 page book that’s written in this manner. It’s frustrating. I was always told that the more invisible the writing style, the better. If writing sutures you into the milieu of the book and allows you to forget that you’re even reading altogether, then that’s ideal. Sometimes I’m okay with a noticeable writing style if it’s clever (e.g. Special Topics in Calamity Physics), but if I notice it and I dislike it, I suddenly find it difficult to lose myself in, or even enjoy the book. Unfortunately, that was the case here.
April 9, 2019
From March 2012 — Seemingly every LibraryThing member I know and even my hairdresser has been raving about this novel set in 19th century colonized India, so it had a lot of expectations to live up to. It is excellently well written, which was the first thing I was able to appreciate about it, since it took me almost half the novel to really warm to this adventure story in which lower caste Indian natives put their lives and security in the hands of a wealthy and ruthless shipping merchant who trades in Opium with China.
Benjamin Burnham, an unmerciful British shipping magnate and evangelist is thwarted by the Chinese who have outlawed the trade in Opium and falls back on shipping human cargo to the Mauritius islands to supply cheap labour (if not outright slaves) to the landowners. The novel is populated by many fascinating characters, who are all introduced in the first of this three-part series. We first get to have a good glimpse of their circumstances and personalities and as the novel progresses, we are shown the ways in which their lives and destinies intermingle, culminating in a sea voyage filled with drama and adventure that is nearly impossible to put down. By that part, I loved this novel so much that I was strongly tempted to start all over from the beginning again just so I could fully appreciate Ghosh's characters and impressive construction, but in the end, the toppling TBR won over. Which is not to say I've given up on the idea of a re-read [which I did in 2015], and I certainly look forward to part 2 in this fascinating voyage with River of Smoke. 4.5 stars
Benjamin Burnham, an unmerciful British shipping magnate and evangelist is thwarted by the Chinese who have outlawed the trade in Opium and falls back on shipping human cargo to the Mauritius islands to supply cheap labour (if not outright slaves) to the landowners. The novel is populated by many fascinating characters, who are all introduced in the first of this three-part series. We first get to have a good glimpse of their circumstances and personalities and as the novel progresses, we are shown the ways in which their lives and destinies intermingle, culminating in a sea voyage filled with drama and adventure that is nearly impossible to put down. By that part, I loved this novel so much that I was strongly tempted to start all over from the beginning again just so I could fully appreciate Ghosh's characters and impressive construction, but in the end, the toppling TBR won over. Which is not to say I've given up on the idea of a re-read [which I did in 2015], and I certainly look forward to part 2 in this fascinating voyage with River of Smoke. 4.5 stars
May 14, 2021
Review-2020 (reread) - 5 stars
I wanted to read the second and third parts of this series and thought I would refresh my memories of this book first. I enjoyed the characters way more this time around. In my first encounter, the tragic parts of this story really overwhelmed me and I missed out on appreciating the humor. But this time around Babu Nobkissin Pander tickled all my funny bones. I highly recommend this series to anyone out there regardless of generic preferences.
Review- 2016 - 4 stars
Read it as part of my literature of contact, comparative lit course. It is remarkable in its lucidity and attention to detail. I can not even imagine the amount of research that goes into writing a book like this. Character developments could definitely have been better but I love Ghosh's rendition of the landscape and his experimentation with the language. The book ended very abruptly, so might as well get a hold of the entire trilogy before you begin this journey.
I wanted to read the second and third parts of this series and thought I would refresh my memories of this book first. I enjoyed the characters way more this time around. In my first encounter, the tragic parts of this story really overwhelmed me and I missed out on appreciating the humor. But this time around Babu Nobkissin Pander tickled all my funny bones. I highly recommend this series to anyone out there regardless of generic preferences.
Review- 2016 - 4 stars
Read it as part of my literature of contact, comparative lit course. It is remarkable in its lucidity and attention to detail. I can not even imagine the amount of research that goes into writing a book like this. Character developments could definitely have been better but I love Ghosh's rendition of the landscape and his experimentation with the language. The book ended very abruptly, so might as well get a hold of the entire trilogy before you begin this journey.
March 5, 2017
I recently picked up a copy of the third in the Ibis Trilogy, Flood of Fire, and given it was about 6 years since I read Sea of Poppies, and perhaps 4 for River of Smoke, I thought I had better re-read these before the finale.
I enjoy the writing of Amitav Ghosh a lot. I find his descriptive imagery builds up the setting and scenery as the story progresses excellent, and his depth of characters is great. While his writing s filled with words foreign to me - some common enough to be known, some not - including in this case a lot of nautical terms, I don't find this distracts from the narrative. If anything, this adds to the atmospheric writing, as in most cases these words are not central to the description, and not knowing exactly what they mean doesn't change the understanding of what is happening.
Others may find the clutter of words distracting, or off-putting however, or be frustrated by being unable to find definitions for the unusual spelling of some of these words. For example:
In this floating bazar there was everything a ship or a lascar might need: canvas by the gudge, spare jugboolaks and zambooras, coils of istingis and rup-yan, stacks of seetulpatty mats, tobacco by the batti, rolls of neem-twigs for the teeth, martabans of isabgol for constipation, and jars of columbo-root for dysentery: one ungainly gordower even had a choola going with a halwai frying up fresh jalebis.
And to the characters - the novel covers a wide range of main characters, and it is fair to say that this first book is the background of these characters, woven is such a way that they all end up in the same place at the same time - on the Ibis, departing Calcutta for Mauritius. This book is almost fairytale in some of its characterisation - the good are good, and the bad are bad, but the woven stories are great. I enjoy the chapters being broken into small sections for separate characters, so we stay with each for only a few minutes of reading at at time. This allows the story to stay apace for each of them, and means we don't have to dip backwards and forwards in time, instead running over the various goings on almost concurrently.
There a a lot of themes involving the characters of the book - caste is a major one, and of course the morals of the opium trade, British colonisation, and reinvention of ones self. There are betrayals, a fall from grace, an attempt at Sati (or a wife joining her dead husband on his funeral pyre),
There is some well researched deception in the book too - two examples of this are the visit by Deeti to the Opium Factory, where the various buildings and their functions, as well as the workers jobs are explained in great detail; the other is on the Ibis, where the sailing, the terminology and the yelling of commands are all great. The prison, and the life in the hold of the ship are two other settings that come to mind as richly painted scenes. All come across as very believable for 1830's life.
I have avoided comment so far on the abrupt ending to the book. For me this isn't an annoyance (although I remember it being the first time around), as the second and third books await, but it is fair to say that this book is really about starting the threads of the characters, building the background, and getting them all on their way out to sea. It gets us out of India, and sets up for the arrival in the new settings for book 2.
I gave this four stars first time around, and that hasn't changed in my second reading.
I enjoy the writing of Amitav Ghosh a lot. I find his descriptive imagery builds up the setting and scenery as the story progresses excellent, and his depth of characters is great. While his writing s filled with words foreign to me - some common enough to be known, some not - including in this case a lot of nautical terms, I don't find this distracts from the narrative. If anything, this adds to the atmospheric writing, as in most cases these words are not central to the description, and not knowing exactly what they mean doesn't change the understanding of what is happening.
Others may find the clutter of words distracting, or off-putting however, or be frustrated by being unable to find definitions for the unusual spelling of some of these words. For example:
In this floating bazar there was everything a ship or a lascar might need: canvas by the gudge, spare jugboolaks and zambooras, coils of istingis and rup-yan, stacks of seetulpatty mats, tobacco by the batti, rolls of neem-twigs for the teeth, martabans of isabgol for constipation, and jars of columbo-root for dysentery: one ungainly gordower even had a choola going with a halwai frying up fresh jalebis.
And to the characters - the novel covers a wide range of main characters, and it is fair to say that this first book is the background of these characters, woven is such a way that they all end up in the same place at the same time - on the Ibis, departing Calcutta for Mauritius. This book is almost fairytale in some of its characterisation - the good are good, and the bad are bad, but the woven stories are great. I enjoy the chapters being broken into small sections for separate characters, so we stay with each for only a few minutes of reading at at time. This allows the story to stay apace for each of them, and means we don't have to dip backwards and forwards in time, instead running over the various goings on almost concurrently.
There a a lot of themes involving the characters of the book - caste is a major one, and of course the morals of the opium trade, British colonisation, and reinvention of ones self. There are betrayals, a fall from grace, an attempt at Sati (or a wife joining her dead husband on his funeral pyre),
There is some well researched deception in the book too - two examples of this are the visit by Deeti to the Opium Factory, where the various buildings and their functions, as well as the workers jobs are explained in great detail; the other is on the Ibis, where the sailing, the terminology and the yelling of commands are all great. The prison, and the life in the hold of the ship are two other settings that come to mind as richly painted scenes. All come across as very believable for 1830's life.
I have avoided comment so far on the abrupt ending to the book. For me this isn't an annoyance (although I remember it being the first time around), as the second and third books await, but it is fair to say that this book is really about starting the threads of the characters, building the background, and getting them all on their way out to sea. It gets us out of India, and sets up for the arrival in the new settings for book 2.
I gave this four stars first time around, and that hasn't changed in my second reading.
August 25, 2008
Very broad in scope, Sea of Poppies is nonetheless an enchanting read, one that had me stopping normal routine so as to get back to it every time I had to put it down. Before you read this, however, you should know that it is designed as the first entry of what will eventually be a trilogy based on the ship Ibis and a group of people who, for whatever reason, found themselves aboard her. I say this because without understanding this point, you may feel a bit cheated by the ending of the novel.
This was the first book I've read by Amitav Ghosh, and while he's writing his second book in the trilogy, I'm going to backtrack and read some of his other work. In Sea of Poppies, the story is divided into three sections: Land, River, Sea, moving the story along from the introduction to all of these very colorful characters to their assembly and journey on the Ibis (which used to carry slaves and now transports workers and convicts to Mauritius). The characters range from a young widow whose fate would have been to join her husband in death in sati, or throwing herself into his funeral pyre, which would elevate the status of her husband's family, to a group of lascars who will crew the Ibis, headed by a chief who seems to have his own agenda as regards the second mate, one Zachary Reid, a freedman from Baltimore. There are also a group of people being transported to work in Mauritius, many of whom were caught up in the cycle of being forced to grow poppies for the British opium trade with China. There is also a raja who has been brought down via a cocked-up set of false charges, and a half-Chinese opium addict who is the raja's cell mate in the brig. Others rounding out the list are the daughter of a French botanist who came late to colonial propriety, and one Baboo Nob Kissin, who feels that he has another's soul inside of him. Each one of these people has his or her own story, and these are woven into the fabric of the novel as the tale progresses. Underlying most of their stories is the hard and fast fact of British colonialism in India -- and all of its accompanying hypocrisy and self-imposed superiority.
Sea of Poppies is a wonderful tale on a grand scale and I can recommend it very highly. Don't get frustrated with the ending, though; look at it as the start of an epic adventure.
This was the first book I've read by Amitav Ghosh, and while he's writing his second book in the trilogy, I'm going to backtrack and read some of his other work. In Sea of Poppies, the story is divided into three sections: Land, River, Sea, moving the story along from the introduction to all of these very colorful characters to their assembly and journey on the Ibis (which used to carry slaves and now transports workers and convicts to Mauritius). The characters range from a young widow whose fate would have been to join her husband in death in sati, or throwing herself into his funeral pyre, which would elevate the status of her husband's family, to a group of lascars who will crew the Ibis, headed by a chief who seems to have his own agenda as regards the second mate, one Zachary Reid, a freedman from Baltimore. There are also a group of people being transported to work in Mauritius, many of whom were caught up in the cycle of being forced to grow poppies for the British opium trade with China. There is also a raja who has been brought down via a cocked-up set of false charges, and a half-Chinese opium addict who is the raja's cell mate in the brig. Others rounding out the list are the daughter of a French botanist who came late to colonial propriety, and one Baboo Nob Kissin, who feels that he has another's soul inside of him. Each one of these people has his or her own story, and these are woven into the fabric of the novel as the tale progresses. Underlying most of their stories is the hard and fast fact of British colonialism in India -- and all of its accompanying hypocrisy and self-imposed superiority.
Sea of Poppies is a wonderful tale on a grand scale and I can recommend it very highly. Don't get frustrated with the ending, though; look at it as the start of an epic adventure.
September 30, 2008
I had forgotten how annoyed I was at The Glass Palace; only to be remembered during Sea of Poppies.
A group of random individuals end up on a former slave ship as it makes it way from India to China during the opening years of the Opium Wars, in the first half of the 19th century. It's a good yarn, although intended as the first in a series of three, don't expect anything like a complete story here - Amitav Ghosh practically lets you off mid-sentence.
Whilst a colourful story, the characters are somewhat generic, and I think his discourse on colonialism was simplistic to say the least.
A strangely unfulfilled read - but then, so was The Glass Palace.
A group of random individuals end up on a former slave ship as it makes it way from India to China during the opening years of the Opium Wars, in the first half of the 19th century. It's a good yarn, although intended as the first in a series of three, don't expect anything like a complete story here - Amitav Ghosh practically lets you off mid-sentence.
Whilst a colourful story, the characters are somewhat generic, and I think his discourse on colonialism was simplistic to say the least.
A strangely unfulfilled read - but then, so was The Glass Palace.
April 6, 2011
"The truth is, sir, that men do what their power permits them to do. We are no different from the Pharaohs or the Mongols: the difference is only that when we kill people we feel compelled to pretend that it is for some higher cause. It is this pretence of virtue, I promise you, that will never be forgiven by history."
Sea of Poppies wrestles with the complex moral questions of the opium trade in an unexpectedly emphathetic way. There are the producers, users, and traffickers, all with complex motivations and needs, and then there are the untold thousands simply swept up by the tide of the opium trade.
Ghosh's magisterial novel connects the lives of a disparate set of characters, ultimately placing them on board a ship, the Ibis, headed for Mauritius. While the plot is too complex for neat summary, a resonant theme is transformation and rebirth. Several characters experience precipitous falls from grace and yet also find redemption. The central character, Deeti, is a simple woman who finds she has more strength than anyone ever expected, while another character, rajah Neel Rattan Halder, finds friendship and solace in the most unexpected of companions.
Ghosh's characterization and pacing are superb, not to mention he wields effortless control over imagery and language. I never found myself growing impatient at the lyrical descriptive passages; instead, these somehow illuminate the very souls of the characters. Having recently come back from a trip to India, I was once again intoxicated by the sights, sounds, and smells of India as depicted in this gorgeous novel.
Halfway through the novel, I discovered Sea of Poppies was the first novel in a trilogy. At this writing, the second novel has yet to be published. I'm hoping, of course, to find the second novel as rewarding as the first. I'm also hoping another audiobook version narrated by Phil Gigante will be produced, for he is an excellent narrator for this work.
Sea of Poppies wrestles with the complex moral questions of the opium trade in an unexpectedly emphathetic way. There are the producers, users, and traffickers, all with complex motivations and needs, and then there are the untold thousands simply swept up by the tide of the opium trade.
Ghosh's magisterial novel connects the lives of a disparate set of characters, ultimately placing them on board a ship, the Ibis, headed for Mauritius. While the plot is too complex for neat summary, a resonant theme is transformation and rebirth. Several characters experience precipitous falls from grace and yet also find redemption. The central character, Deeti, is a simple woman who finds she has more strength than anyone ever expected, while another character, rajah Neel Rattan Halder, finds friendship and solace in the most unexpected of companions.
Ghosh's characterization and pacing are superb, not to mention he wields effortless control over imagery and language. I never found myself growing impatient at the lyrical descriptive passages; instead, these somehow illuminate the very souls of the characters. Having recently come back from a trip to India, I was once again intoxicated by the sights, sounds, and smells of India as depicted in this gorgeous novel.
Halfway through the novel, I discovered Sea of Poppies was the first novel in a trilogy. At this writing, the second novel has yet to be published. I'm hoping, of course, to find the second novel as rewarding as the first. I'm also hoping another audiobook version narrated by Phil Gigante will be produced, for he is an excellent narrator for this work.
July 29, 2017
3.5 stars
Sea of Poppies is set in the backdrop of the opium trade and serves as a brilliant example of how simply reading history books on a subject can sometimes only gives you a limited insight, whilst historical fiction can offer a more humane dimension to our understanding of a past event. I have briefly studied the Opium Wars in the past, but after reading this book I have a whole new understanding of the wider repercussions of Britain’s involvement with opium and how the trade affected everyday people in India as well as China, which traditionally gets the most attention. Much of the focus of the book is on the devastating impact the cultivation of opium had on Indian farmers, as fields of crops were forcibly converted into poppies which were then refined and sold by the British to Chinese markets.
The story opens sometime in the 1830s, on the eve of the first Opium War between the British and Chinese. There is a huge cast of characters and every one of them has been affected by the opium trade in some way, however indirect or trivial. The cast includes, among others, a young French woman, an Indian widow to opium, an American freedman and a disgraced former high-caste landowner, all of whom converge on the Ibis, a ship bound for a plantation in Mauritius, at the apex of the novel. The writing can be a bit confusing for someone new to Indian culture because Ghosh doesn’t shy away from using the appropriate Indian term or title for something, but this just added to the novel’s authenticity. For the most part I understood what was going on but there was one character whose slang was massively over the top, making his dialogue utterly incomprehensible. It got to the stage that whenever I saw his name I would immediately skip onto the next paragraph and not even attempt to decipher his butchered attempts at English.
My enjoyment and rating of this novel really fluctuated from one chapter to the next. Some parts of the novel, usually those from the perspectives of Deeti and Rajan, I flew through but others felt excruciatingly slow and were weighed down by unnecessary descriptions or information dumps about their childhood. Simply put, there were too many characters, a problem exacerbated by the fact that several had very similar sounding names so I kept thinking one description was referring to one character before finding out a chapter or so later that it must have been referring to someone else. Even though every character was given their own mini biography upon being introduced, I never felt particularly attached to any of them. In fact, any one of them could have been violently killed at any point in the story and I wouldn’t have given a fig. This is not the mark of a great novel. This really sums up my main issue which this novel. It was very informative and interesting, but it didn't make me feel anything. It was simply an informative way to pass the time and nothing more.
Sea of Poppies is set in the backdrop of the opium trade and serves as a brilliant example of how simply reading history books on a subject can sometimes only gives you a limited insight, whilst historical fiction can offer a more humane dimension to our understanding of a past event. I have briefly studied the Opium Wars in the past, but after reading this book I have a whole new understanding of the wider repercussions of Britain’s involvement with opium and how the trade affected everyday people in India as well as China, which traditionally gets the most attention. Much of the focus of the book is on the devastating impact the cultivation of opium had on Indian farmers, as fields of crops were forcibly converted into poppies which were then refined and sold by the British to Chinese markets.
The story opens sometime in the 1830s, on the eve of the first Opium War between the British and Chinese. There is a huge cast of characters and every one of them has been affected by the opium trade in some way, however indirect or trivial. The cast includes, among others, a young French woman, an Indian widow to opium, an American freedman and a disgraced former high-caste landowner, all of whom converge on the Ibis, a ship bound for a plantation in Mauritius, at the apex of the novel. The writing can be a bit confusing for someone new to Indian culture because Ghosh doesn’t shy away from using the appropriate Indian term or title for something, but this just added to the novel’s authenticity. For the most part I understood what was going on but there was one character whose slang was massively over the top, making his dialogue utterly incomprehensible. It got to the stage that whenever I saw his name I would immediately skip onto the next paragraph and not even attempt to decipher his butchered attempts at English.
My enjoyment and rating of this novel really fluctuated from one chapter to the next. Some parts of the novel, usually those from the perspectives of Deeti and Rajan, I flew through but others felt excruciatingly slow and were weighed down by unnecessary descriptions or information dumps about their childhood. Simply put, there were too many characters, a problem exacerbated by the fact that several had very similar sounding names so I kept thinking one description was referring to one character before finding out a chapter or so later that it must have been referring to someone else. Even though every character was given their own mini biography upon being introduced, I never felt particularly attached to any of them. In fact, any one of them could have been violently killed at any point in the story and I wouldn’t have given a fig. This is not the mark of a great novel. This really sums up my main issue which this novel. It was very informative and interesting, but it didn't make me feel anything. It was simply an informative way to pass the time and nothing more.
September 3, 2016
I'm doing a series of articles on the Ibis trilogy in The New Indian Express. The first three, written after reading the three parts of this book, are provided below.
(1)
For some time, the literary phenomenon that is Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy passed me by. Perhaps the fact that I read one of his earlier novels, The Hungry Tide, and couldn’t call it a favorite played its part. Perhaps it was just that there are too many good books and one can only read a minor percentage among them.
Recently, after seeing mentions of Ghosh’s latest book, The Great Derangement, in newspapers and magazines I follow, I was reminded of the trilogy again. On an impulse, I picked up Sea of Poppies from my shelf and started reading.
Set in 1838, just before the first Opium war between Britain and China, the novel starts with Deeti, a young woman living in a village on the outskirts of Ghazipur. Her husband, an ‘afeemkhor’, works in the opium factory in Ghazipur. Deeti manages the opium crop in their land. Farmers like her are forced to grow opium by British authorities interested in maximizing the factories' raw material. The British are convinced that their opium products can be easily sold in China. The wobbling of this conviction will soon lead to war.
We move on to Zachary Reid, an American aboard the ship named Ibis, which has just dropped anchor ‘where the holy river debouches into the Bay of Bengal.’ The Ibis’ prior journey through the oceans is described, abutting the coast of Patagonia, the turn into the Atlantic, the Cape of Good Hope, a stop-over in Mauritius, and then the Indian Ocean. In India, Reid will meet his employer Mr. Burnham and a whole lot of other interesting characters, who will all join on the Ibis for its next voyage. We know that Deeti will play a part in this voyage, though it is difficult to conceive how at this point.
At the end of Part 1 of Sea of Poppies now, with the cast of characters and their backstories introduced, I’m looking forward to the voyage. It is doomed to, however, have a ghastly purpose: the transportation of indentured labour to Mauritius. The Ibis is, in origin, a slave-carrying ship. At some point in the novel, I hope Ghosh will show a rebellion against the barbarity of these operations.
The most interesting bit in the first third of the novel is the speech of characters. A British man called Mr. Doughty bespatters his English with a whole host of Hindustani words. Eg. “The cubber is that the kuzannah is out,” or “Just won’t hoga.” That hoga is ‘happen’ in English is never told. Ghosh’s linguistic hubris might have made the book a difficult read for some, but is an absolute delight for me. The speech of sailor-groups called lascars, derived from a host of ethnicities from the rim of the Indian ocean, is a language of its own, and it is a delightful exercise to try to comprehend what their leader, Serang Ali, says.
(2)
Now, after finishing the second part (‘River’), I know that Ghosh’s interest in spoken language in maritime melting pots like Calcutta will extend to the entire length of the Ibis trilogy.
Here, what gave me chuckles was the character of Paulette, a young French woman who, after the demise of her botanist father, accepts the beneficence of the estate of Mr. Burnham, a British businessman in Calcutta. Raised alongside natives, Paulette is good in Bengali and ‘Hindusthani’ and mixes, along with these languages, words of French in her spoken English. Her speech is a delight for a reader who can keep up. But it’s not easy, not least because Ghosh is too cute in some places. Eg. When Paulette, speaking in English, wants to say the word ‘finally’, she doesn’t just err by uttering the French word ‘finalment’– instead, she says ‘finalmently’. This twin error—of using a French word while speaking English and spoiling that word as well—is comic only to someone who has some knowledge of French. Another example is when she says ‘toot-sweet’, an Anglicized version (rarely used) of the French phrase ‘tout de suite’, which is French for ‘right now’ or ‘immediately’.
It is because of such wordplays that criticism about Ghosh’s disregard for the common reader has some grounding. Yet it is difficult to see what else he could have done after committing to a certain kind of verisimilitude. What makes a common reader complain is also the very inventiveness that sets ‘Sea of Poppies’ apart from common historical fiction that paints everything in easy, modern tones.
Apart from the wordplay, the second part sees considerable transformations in characters. And there is no transformation bigger than that of Neel Rattan Halder, the Raja of Raskhali, who is victim to an insidious conspiracy crafted by Burnham. In his first days in the lock-up at Lalbazar, the Raja is allowed royal conveniences to the extent possible. But these soon wash off. When the Raja is forced to eat in common utensils, his caste becomes the first victim; when he is expected to sweep his own chamber, his social standing is lost; when his wife abandons purdah, his patriarchal pride is lost; when, after being shifted to Alipore jail, the jailor orders a full body inspection, his ownership of his own body is lost. And it is after losing all these that the erstwhile Raja realizes what it might be to be a bonafide human being. In the jail, he cleans up for his cellmate Aafat, a slovenly opium addict suffering in withdrawal. This simple act of service instills Neel with a sense of well-being he has never known before.
I put my money on Neel becoming one of the heroes on the Ibis.
(3)
In the third part of the novel, Ibis the schooner is finally set on its voyage, carrying its cargo of indentured labourers for the plantations in Mauritius. Among these, there are characters who we have followed from quite early—Deeti, the Bhojpuri speaking opium farmer; Kalua, Deeti’s second husband, who is escaping the past with her; and Paulette, the runaway French woman who has embedded herself with the coolies. Next to the labourers’ holding beneath the deck, there is a confinement inside which lie two prisoners, one of them known well to us: Neel Rattan Halder, previously the Raja of Raskhali, now condemned to prison term in the island of Mauritius. The other prisoner is Ah Fatt, the opium addict who Neel took care of in Alipore prison, and with whom he now shares a strong bond of friendship. Ah Fatt’s backstory is now given to us, and we learn that he comes from Canton in China, and is, in fact, half-Parsi. His background story is a rarity in that it does not directly merge with the plot strands in the novel — and it is for this reason that I assume that he will have a greater role to play in the subsequent novels.
The third part of Sea of Poppies is plot and action heavy. Two villainous characters get killed. But the main characters’ fate remains unresolved, and in a gesture that shares its guile with the hook-endings that many tv shows provide these days, Ghosh literally leaves us in the middle of a storm.
Overall, the intricate plot of Sea of Poppies, charged with backstories and occasionally incredulous confluence of circumstance, is one of its salient feature: the girth is justified by some valid excesses in setting historical context; but there is no superfluity in action, and everything contributes to the plot, with Ghosh doing well in hiding the contrivance behind the circumstances. With characters’ feelings too, we never dwell into these more than is necessary. This makes the novel, and perhaps the trilogy as a whole, resemble the epic modality. The shrine-making that the character of Deeti is involved in, etching on surfaces the key figures and personages that partake in her journey, points to a desire for myth-making that could arguably be read in the author himself, as someone committed to these characters for so long.
The fact that despite 500-odd pages, there is no final turnaround in the fate of even one of the central characters seems a bit unfair. But our canvas here is wider, and this is perhaps Ghosh’s way of egging us on to the next novel, River of Smoke.
(1)
For some time, the literary phenomenon that is Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy passed me by. Perhaps the fact that I read one of his earlier novels, The Hungry Tide, and couldn’t call it a favorite played its part. Perhaps it was just that there are too many good books and one can only read a minor percentage among them.
Recently, after seeing mentions of Ghosh’s latest book, The Great Derangement, in newspapers and magazines I follow, I was reminded of the trilogy again. On an impulse, I picked up Sea of Poppies from my shelf and started reading.
Set in 1838, just before the first Opium war between Britain and China, the novel starts with Deeti, a young woman living in a village on the outskirts of Ghazipur. Her husband, an ‘afeemkhor’, works in the opium factory in Ghazipur. Deeti manages the opium crop in their land. Farmers like her are forced to grow opium by British authorities interested in maximizing the factories' raw material. The British are convinced that their opium products can be easily sold in China. The wobbling of this conviction will soon lead to war.
We move on to Zachary Reid, an American aboard the ship named Ibis, which has just dropped anchor ‘where the holy river debouches into the Bay of Bengal.’ The Ibis’ prior journey through the oceans is described, abutting the coast of Patagonia, the turn into the Atlantic, the Cape of Good Hope, a stop-over in Mauritius, and then the Indian Ocean. In India, Reid will meet his employer Mr. Burnham and a whole lot of other interesting characters, who will all join on the Ibis for its next voyage. We know that Deeti will play a part in this voyage, though it is difficult to conceive how at this point.
At the end of Part 1 of Sea of Poppies now, with the cast of characters and their backstories introduced, I’m looking forward to the voyage. It is doomed to, however, have a ghastly purpose: the transportation of indentured labour to Mauritius. The Ibis is, in origin, a slave-carrying ship. At some point in the novel, I hope Ghosh will show a rebellion against the barbarity of these operations.
The most interesting bit in the first third of the novel is the speech of characters. A British man called Mr. Doughty bespatters his English with a whole host of Hindustani words. Eg. “The cubber is that the kuzannah is out,” or “Just won’t hoga.” That hoga is ‘happen’ in English is never told. Ghosh’s linguistic hubris might have made the book a difficult read for some, but is an absolute delight for me. The speech of sailor-groups called lascars, derived from a host of ethnicities from the rim of the Indian ocean, is a language of its own, and it is a delightful exercise to try to comprehend what their leader, Serang Ali, says.
(2)
Now, after finishing the second part (‘River’), I know that Ghosh’s interest in spoken language in maritime melting pots like Calcutta will extend to the entire length of the Ibis trilogy.
Here, what gave me chuckles was the character of Paulette, a young French woman who, after the demise of her botanist father, accepts the beneficence of the estate of Mr. Burnham, a British businessman in Calcutta. Raised alongside natives, Paulette is good in Bengali and ‘Hindusthani’ and mixes, along with these languages, words of French in her spoken English. Her speech is a delight for a reader who can keep up. But it’s not easy, not least because Ghosh is too cute in some places. Eg. When Paulette, speaking in English, wants to say the word ‘finally’, she doesn’t just err by uttering the French word ‘finalment’– instead, she says ‘finalmently’. This twin error—of using a French word while speaking English and spoiling that word as well—is comic only to someone who has some knowledge of French. Another example is when she says ‘toot-sweet’, an Anglicized version (rarely used) of the French phrase ‘tout de suite’, which is French for ‘right now’ or ‘immediately’.
It is because of such wordplays that criticism about Ghosh’s disregard for the common reader has some grounding. Yet it is difficult to see what else he could have done after committing to a certain kind of verisimilitude. What makes a common reader complain is also the very inventiveness that sets ‘Sea of Poppies’ apart from common historical fiction that paints everything in easy, modern tones.
Apart from the wordplay, the second part sees considerable transformations in characters. And there is no transformation bigger than that of Neel Rattan Halder, the Raja of Raskhali, who is victim to an insidious conspiracy crafted by Burnham. In his first days in the lock-up at Lalbazar, the Raja is allowed royal conveniences to the extent possible. But these soon wash off. When the Raja is forced to eat in common utensils, his caste becomes the first victim; when he is expected to sweep his own chamber, his social standing is lost; when his wife abandons purdah, his patriarchal pride is lost; when, after being shifted to Alipore jail, the jailor orders a full body inspection, his ownership of his own body is lost. And it is after losing all these that the erstwhile Raja realizes what it might be to be a bonafide human being. In the jail, he cleans up for his cellmate Aafat, a slovenly opium addict suffering in withdrawal. This simple act of service instills Neel with a sense of well-being he has never known before.
I put my money on Neel becoming one of the heroes on the Ibis.
(3)
In the third part of the novel, Ibis the schooner is finally set on its voyage, carrying its cargo of indentured labourers for the plantations in Mauritius. Among these, there are characters who we have followed from quite early—Deeti, the Bhojpuri speaking opium farmer; Kalua, Deeti’s second husband, who is escaping the past with her; and Paulette, the runaway French woman who has embedded herself with the coolies. Next to the labourers’ holding beneath the deck, there is a confinement inside which lie two prisoners, one of them known well to us: Neel Rattan Halder, previously the Raja of Raskhali, now condemned to prison term in the island of Mauritius. The other prisoner is Ah Fatt, the opium addict who Neel took care of in Alipore prison, and with whom he now shares a strong bond of friendship. Ah Fatt’s backstory is now given to us, and we learn that he comes from Canton in China, and is, in fact, half-Parsi. His background story is a rarity in that it does not directly merge with the plot strands in the novel — and it is for this reason that I assume that he will have a greater role to play in the subsequent novels.
The third part of Sea of Poppies is plot and action heavy. Two villainous characters get killed. But the main characters’ fate remains unresolved, and in a gesture that shares its guile with the hook-endings that many tv shows provide these days, Ghosh literally leaves us in the middle of a storm.
Overall, the intricate plot of Sea of Poppies, charged with backstories and occasionally incredulous confluence of circumstance, is one of its salient feature: the girth is justified by some valid excesses in setting historical context; but there is no superfluity in action, and everything contributes to the plot, with Ghosh doing well in hiding the contrivance behind the circumstances. With characters’ feelings too, we never dwell into these more than is necessary. This makes the novel, and perhaps the trilogy as a whole, resemble the epic modality. The shrine-making that the character of Deeti is involved in, etching on surfaces the key figures and personages that partake in her journey, points to a desire for myth-making that could arguably be read in the author himself, as someone committed to these characters for so long.
The fact that despite 500-odd pages, there is no final turnaround in the fate of even one of the central characters seems a bit unfair. But our canvas here is wider, and this is perhaps Ghosh’s way of egging us on to the next novel, River of Smoke.
May 3, 2018
While spread over a sprawling cast and a wide area, Sea of Poppies in concise in its theme, the spread of bondage via the medium of opium. I had been aware previously of the opium wars that had been waged against China to force its government to cede large tranches of sovereignty. I had not been fully aware of how linked the opium trade was to the wrecking of the Indian economy and the fortunes of the British Raj., and to the diaspora of Indian coolie labour through the British empire. Shame on me, I have had friends at school and work who carried that history in their lineage - ethnic East Indian/Guyana, and ethnic Chinese/Mauritius. I had never connected the dots; this book has done that for me.
It is marvelous how Ghosh has linked so many forms of bondage here:
American chattel slavery, personified by Ibis, an ex-slave ship.
Indentured labour - the unfortunates being transported to Mauritius.
Domestic bondage - “When I become master of this house, how will you get by except at my pleasure?”
The burden of karma
The addiction of opium - Deeti’s husband’s life is reduced to living to consume opium (or is that living to be consumed by opium?)
The addiction to violence and torture - personified by Crowle and Bhyro Singh, who live (and die) to torment, maim and kill
Worst of all, the contracts that can be used to encompass ruin, where individuals use the power of the state to destroy lives and cultures
Ghosh builds some striking images in this book - Deeti’s hut “floating upon a river of poppies”, where “in an age of flowers”, no thatch can be gotten for her roof. It is an image he returns to - “Many of these people had been driven from their villages by the flood of flowers that had washed over the countryside: lands that had once provided sustenance were now swamped by the rising tide of poppies”, just as a tide will engulf the land, as he describes a brackish estuary - “the flat, fertile, populous plains yielded to swamps and marshes; the river turned brackish, so that its water could no longer be drunk; every day the water rose and fell, covering and uncovering vast banks of mud” - one supposes this is the sea of the title.
Perhaps the most striking image is from the opium factory - Deeti sees the demons of hell labouring to encompass humanity’s ruin - “a host of dark, legless torsos was circling around and around, like some enslaved tribe of demons”. The Ghazipur opium factory is still in operation. It was visited by Kipling. His article In an Opium Factory illustrates some of the nastier aspects of the Raj and of his character.
It is marvelous how Ghosh has linked so many forms of bondage here:
American chattel slavery, personified by Ibis, an ex-slave ship.
Indentured labour - the unfortunates being transported to Mauritius.
Domestic bondage - “When I become master of this house, how will you get by except at my pleasure?”
The burden of karma
The addiction of opium - Deeti’s husband’s life is reduced to living to consume opium (or is that living to be consumed by opium?)
The addiction to violence and torture - personified by Crowle and Bhyro Singh, who live (and die) to torment, maim and kill
Worst of all, the contracts that can be used to encompass ruin, where individuals use the power of the state to destroy lives and cultures
Ghosh builds some striking images in this book - Deeti’s hut “floating upon a river of poppies”, where “in an age of flowers”, no thatch can be gotten for her roof. It is an image he returns to - “Many of these people had been driven from their villages by the flood of flowers that had washed over the countryside: lands that had once provided sustenance were now swamped by the rising tide of poppies”, just as a tide will engulf the land, as he describes a brackish estuary - “the flat, fertile, populous plains yielded to swamps and marshes; the river turned brackish, so that its water could no longer be drunk; every day the water rose and fell, covering and uncovering vast banks of mud” - one supposes this is the sea of the title.
Perhaps the most striking image is from the opium factory - Deeti sees the demons of hell labouring to encompass humanity’s ruin - “a host of dark, legless torsos was circling around and around, like some enslaved tribe of demons”. The Ghazipur opium factory is still in operation. It was visited by Kipling. His article In an Opium Factory illustrates some of the nastier aspects of the Raj and of his character.
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