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River of Smoke
River of Smoke
River of Smoke
Audiobook22 hours

River of Smoke

Written by Amitav Ghosh

Narrated by Sanjiv Jhaveri

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of Year
A NPR Best Book of the Year

In Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies, the Ibis began its treacherous journey across the Indian Ocean, bound for the cane fields of Mauritius with a cargo of indentured servants. Now, in River of Smoke, the former slave ship flounders in the Bay of Bengal, caught in the midst of a deadly cyclone.

The storm also threatens the clipper ship Anahita, groaning with the largest consignment of opium ever to leave India for Canton. Meanwhile, the Redruth, a nursery ship, carries horticulturists determined to track down the priceless botanical treasures of China. All will converge in Canton's Fanqui-town, or Foreign Enclave, a powder keg awaiting a spark to ignite the Opium Wars. A spectacular adventure, but also a bold indictment of global avarice, River of Smoke is a consuming historical novel with powerful contemporary resonance.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 27, 2011
ISBN9781423373858
River of Smoke
Author

Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He studied at the Doon School; St. Stephens College; Delhi University; Oxford University; and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alexandria. His first job was at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi. He earned his doctorate at Oxford before he wrote his first novel.In February 2004 Amitav Ghosh was appointed Visiting Professor in the Department of English at Harvard University. He is married with two children and lives in New York.

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Reviews for River of Smoke

Rating: 3.9671875881250003 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies is an original epic; it introduces characters from of a multitude of religions and upbringings and ethnicities from all over eastern India in 1838. Through a thoroughly clever storyline, the author brings his characters together into one place. Set amongst the poppy fields of the Ganges River and the wharves of Calcutta, Ghosh brings to life a time and a place so vividly it feels like actual time travel. Ghosh takes the use of language – historical and local use of idiom, tongue and vernacular – to a dizzying height, yet never once is the reader separated from meaning and motivation. I can't remember the last time I was so utterly convinced and transported by a book's places and people. They became my friends, in all their charm and shortcomings. Both wit and tragedy and an impeccable use of language make Ghosh's book brilliantly Dickensian. I have seldom read a book that is so perfectly balanced, well-written and without flaw. This is supposedly the first in a trilogy and I will eagerly wait for the next volumes.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What an incredible tale to satisfy many kinds of appetites. A broad array of interesting characters, as far apart in caste and location as can be at the start, come together as if drawn by a force of nature.Set in 1830s India to start, it's rich with historical background at the level of daily lives. From a raja to workers of the opium fields, from the owner of a shipping fleet to a part-black lascar (sailor), with other oddly assorted lives mixed in to this tower of Babel. Throw in a Chinese prisoner, some pirates, a feared male who transmogrifies in a startling manner, and you have just some of the intriguing characters who you have to take seriously in their various plights. Sea of Poppies is an old time adventure on land and sea that promises to keep you invested in long-term outcomes.This is the first of a promised trilogy that is destined for the Opium Wars in China. The first volume ends like the Perils of Pauline and I don't know how long I can bear to wait for volume two. I really want to know what's nextPick it up if you're at serious about broadening your experience and want entrancing writing. I got hooked on Amitav Ghosh through his The Hungry Tide and The Glass Palace. Wonderful, wonderful.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Sea of Poppies was the first book of a new trilogy written by Amitav Ghosh. Set during the Opium Wars between the British Empire and China, it’s the story of a group of international characters who are flung together on a large ship, Ibis, who must cross the Indian Ocean at the beginning of the war.Ghosh took many pages to set up the back stories of each character who will eventually end up sailing on the Ibis. There’s Zachary, an American freedsman, and Paulette, a French orphan. And Neel, a broke and disgraced raja and Deeti, a widowed Indian villagewoman – all of their stories showed how their personal struggles landed them on a dangerous journey across the sea.The back of my edition contained a robust glossary, which was extraordinarily helpful as I tried to understand much of the dialogue in this book. Many passages drifted by me like a foreign language, and I had a hard time following the conversations, which proved to be a distraction for me.Many reviewers have compared Ghosh’s writing style to Dickens, and that’s probably the best description I can muster too. Ghosh introduced a multitude of characters, all centered on some type of struggle. My biggest complaint about Sea of Poppies was the long time it took Ghosh to get his characters on the ship, which was the crux of the story. Considering this is the first book of a trilogy, it’s understandable that Ghosh needed to set up the story. For an impatient reader like me, though, it was hard for me to get into the book. Add in the foreign jargon, and the whole experience felt more like homework than reading.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Like the giant ship at its core, this historical novel takes its time lumbering up to speed. Over the first few hundred pages, as it cuts back and forth among its cast of characters and the storylines which lead them to board the Ibis, it becomes tempting to skim more quickly past the characters one is less interested in, until it begins to seem that one is less interested in far too many of the characters. Ghosh's drowning of the page with period and regional terms and slang ("Sheeshmull blazing with shammers and candles. Paltans of bearers and dhidmutgars. Demi-johns of French loll-scrub and carboys of iced simkin. And the karibat!") begins to grate as authorial affectation more than it charms as realistic detail. However, there are some lovely set pieces and moments of real emotional impact along the way, and once the ship and the novel finally set sail (more than two-thirds of the way through this first novel of a projected trilogy), and the characters' lives intersect on board, the dramatic complications multiply in a series of satisfying incidents which suddenly leave the reader anxious for the next volume.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I can't decide whether to give this three stars or four. The characters fascinate me, and the author's succeeded in making me care what happens to them. However, all the nautical talk gets boring. There's having some authentic nautical jargon for accuracy and then there's pages and pages of descriptions of chores on a ship that don't drive the plot anywhere. Perhaps that interests some people, but I'm more interested in what happens to the characters than ship's business. I look forward to reading the next installment when, I hope, they'll have arrived at their destination and ditched the ship.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Set on the eve of the opium wars the story revolves around a former slave ship The Ibis and it's motley cast of characters that are traveling to Mauritius; coolies, convicts, and stowaways and the ship's crew. With many different lives involved the novel is long in the setting up the background of their stories and each person's reasons for ending up on the ship and their involvement in the opium trade and how it is changing their lives. This has a very complex plot and with so many characters it is hard to summarize but it was quite an enchanting read and I can see why there has been so much hype on LT about this one and the second in the trilogy [River of Smoke]. I plan on continuing with the trilogy right away. I just hope Ghosh has started writing the third!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Apparently this is the first book of a trilogy. I wasn't aware of this while I reading it or while writing the review below. The review was written assuming this book was the full story.I’m incapable of summarizing this book. There is too much here. Yes, this is about the horrors of opium and poppy growing in India. Yes this is a book on India – specifically 19th century British dominated India at the brink of the 1st Chinese-English Opium War. It’s also a book about language – specifically the Calcutta/Indian/Indian Ocean warping of the English language. Instead of a glossary, the back of the book has a “Chrestomathy”. This is apparently a list of words which has, in place of the definition, a sort of biography or linguistic history of the word. The credit for this particular list is given to one of the book's characters whom, it’s noted, only entered the words he was interested in. It’s also a book about the wild complexity of cultures and peoples in and around the Indian Ocean and southeast China. It’s also a character driven novel. And, at some point, it becomes something like a suspense novel – perhaps somewhat undermining some of the more serious aspects of the book.The characters in this book have a cacophony of backgrounds that is simply wild. Almost all have some kind of ethnic oddity, or, lacking that, some kind of distinct personal history oddity. They might be Indian, Bengali, Indian born Englishmen, American freed slaves, half Indian/half some sort of Chinese, or a “lascar” – the random collection of Indian Ocean seamen from who knows where. Or some other ethnicity. Each has their own collection of languages they speak; some, like the lascars, having their own sort of compiled language. Individually they are quite interesting, and memorable - although having all of them in the same place and interacting with each other pushes my suspense of disbelief.Ghosh is doing a lot of things here. He’s being both serious and having fun. He’s created a memorable group of characters, an odd but profound view of part of the darkest side of the British rule in India, and a pretty wacky story. Personally this left me entertained, but a bit confused as to what his real point was.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I had read "In an Antique Land," Ghosh's account of his research in Egypt, but I didn't realize he wrote fiction until I saw "River of Smoke" at the library. I checked it out and plunged in,only to stop when I realized that I was hopelessly lost because I hadn't read the first volume in the Ibis trilogy, "Sea of Poppies." I went back to the library for "Sea of Poppies." I made the right decision. "Sea of Poppies" is one of my favorite books ever and I am now ready to read "River of Smoke." "Sea of Poppies" follows the lives of a colorful cast of characters whose lives converge on a ship en route from Calcutta to Mauritius, in 1838, on the eve of the Opium Wars. The protagonists are American, British, French, Indian, and Chinese. As other reviewers have commented, the mix of languages and jargon is difficult to understand in the beginning -- and I really didn't decipher every word -- but the richness of the characters and the plot propelled me forward. I was fascinated by the collision and blending of cultures. It's clear that Ghosh completed a massive amount of research in order to accurately and vividly bring to life this particular place and time. "Sea of Poppies" illuminates the value of bring together people from diverse backgrounds; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. From reading the first 100 pages of "River of Smoke" I knew how "Sea of Poppies" ends, but with this book, the pleasure is in taking the journey, even when you know the outcome.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book started slowly, but then really engaged me. The dialogue, with all of its archaic English and Indian vocabulary was difficult at first, but gradually I realised it added a certain flavour to the story. This was a real yarn, and I very much look forward to the second novel in the trilogy.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This historic novel is about the lives of several people from all over the world whose destiny brings them together on the sailing ship, The Ibis. The story is set in the 1800's in India under British rule. Opium, grown in India, is being traded to China, not only to give British access to Chinese silks and spices, but also to create a drug dependency that forces the Chinese rulers to become puppets of the British Empire. This epic story covers such a motley group of people including a poor widow who barely scrapes out a living growing opium, a freed American mulatto who moves up the social ladder as a 2nd mate on The Ibis, and even a wealthy Zamindar who loses his entire family fortune through trickery in the British colonial courts. This bizarre group of characters finally all end up on The Ibis, set to sail from India to China.

    I loved this book! Not only was this a beautiful story with a rich cast of characters, it described a part of history that was relatively unknown by me. I recently listened to The Wisdom of History lectures that talk about various World Empires and compared the cruel and corrupt Ottomans to the upright and noble British. Well, this was definitely not a proud moment in the history of the British Empire. I could listen to books like this all day... and here is the bad news. The Sea of Poppies is the 1st of a trilogy... and the other 2 books have not even been started. But for people who love epic novels like Pillars of the Earth, then this is a good choice. The narrator for this book is Phil Gigante who does an excellent job portraying the diverse cast of characters. But, for the non conversation parts of his book, I found his voice to be a little too bright or chirpy. Not quite sure why this bugged me but it didn't seem like the right match for a story of such epic scale. I will definitely listen to the rest of this series ...when it is written.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The stage is set for subsequent books in Ghosh's planned trilogy - and set very well, I might add. The writing within Sea of Poppies graphically conveys incredible detail - sights, smells, thoughts, emotions - the list goes on. Ghosh has created a wide array of characters that inhabit The Ibis, characters that will serve well carrying the story forward while simultaneously holding the reader's interest. Ghosh's descriptions of their worlds, worlds drawn together by a product of the poppy, draw the reader in. We experience this world, we don't just observe it. Much of this book is devoted to introducing the characters, bringing them together from disparate backgrounds and experiences to their shared life on The Ibis. For that reason, some may not like this book as a stand alone, but for those that want to invest more time, it is likely that the wait will be worth it. This was my first exposure to Ghosh. I look forward to reading more, especially further efforts that tell us more about the fate of those aboard The Ibis.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I didn't really get into this book as much as I expected. For one thing, much of it is written in the vernacular, which I found difficult to read and therefore harder to engage with. After finished it, it did not feel especially memorable. However, it did end with the sense that there is more story to come - I believe a sequel is on the way and I may well read it.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I liked how this book vacillated between those who grew the poppy, those who were addicted to the poppy, and those who exported/sold the poppy for great profit. However, the full execution of the plot was weak, and ultimately the novel did not leave me with a lasting impression.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    On the subject of Amitav Ghosh--I can only conclude from Sea of Poppies and the other two works I've read that he's an excellent storyteller. A gifted writer. Sometimes those two things don't add up to greatness but in general it means that one way or another reading him won't be a waste of time. Starting off on a different tack than some of the other reviews of the work--it's almost like I've written a conclusion before I even start reviewing the book. Even so--keeping on a different tack what strikes me somewhat is the characterizations that Mr. Ghosh is able to create here. There are numerous good guys and it's clear that the good guys are all nice people with good intentions. The more interesting characters for me are his bad guys--the underhanded supposedly god fearing plutocrat Benjamin Burnham and the judge he has in his pocket Kendalbushe supposedly spreading christianity, truth and justice but in reality--or the reality of the book--they've become super wealthy by lining their own pockets trough the spreading of their sanctimonious and self serving bs. They are really Dickensian characters. Two other evil doers of note--the brutal Bhyro Singh an Indian Army torturer and the first mate of the Ibis Mr. Crowle. The Crowle character in some respects seems straight out of Dostoyevsky. As for the story itself it revolves around a sea voyage (in the early part of the 19 th century)from India to Mauritius of various down and outs either fleeing the law and/or poverty. The good people more or less being at the mercy of the bad and mostly through no crime of their own. Ghosh develops a number of these characters independently of each other and then brings them together on the boat. He has an excellent eye for period detail and a cheeky way of delivering dialogue and teasing readers in to looking up terms in the glossary he conveniently provides at the back of the work which at times very mischieviously only reroutes them to other terms. So on the subject of Ghosh--this book and the other two of his I've read previously I can only conclude that he's a gifted writer and storyteller still working on creating a masterpiece and reaching greatness some day. I don't think this is it but OTOH Sea of Poppies is an entertaining and very often fun way to while away the time.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Usually I hate a book that seems to have been written only as a set up for another book. It just seems commercial and dishonest. Sea of Poppies, however, far before it is over shows itself to be one of these books, and I loved it. Toward the end one oppressed person says to his tormentor, "What did I ever do to you?" and the sadist responds, "It's just who you are." That's pretty much the premise of the book. There are people who, by virtue of their birth think they are deserving of all the best in life, and there are people who are born to serve them with their minds, bodies and souls if it can be forced. The British force the Indians to grow poppies to be made into opium that they believe they have the right to force the Chinese to buy. Religion, of course, is always on the side of the oppressor. As a character says, "Free trade is Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is free trade." He also believes that the slave trade is the ultimate expression of freedom. Within the confines of this universal caste system there remain people who think their reward should be based on merit. They think if they work hard and effectively, pray to the right gods in the right way, discipline themselves and treat others well, they will be treated fairly. The reader's heart is always with them, and they are so frequently wrong.This is excellent fiction revolving around the opium trade between Britain, India and China, and the beginning of the opium war. Amazingly, though written by a man, women play the role of normal human beings with lives and actions all their own. Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This installment was unnecessarily long and too much of a drag; specially right after the Robin character started sending letters. The never ending letters hardly moved the plot ahead and wasted hours of my time. Every time the letters started, I wanted to throw away my phone. Last few chapters had a good build up, but the climax was fuuussssss.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Oh! How I wish that my copy of Sea of Poppies had come with a glossary! As it is, I feel that I have lost a great deal of the pleasure in not being able to understand all of the various pidgin language combinations spoken by the sprawling cast of characters. On the other hand, I got enough to appreciate the novel itself thoroughly. I haven't read The White Tiger, but it's hard to see how it could be better than this book.
    This is the first volume of a trilogy and most of the narrative is used to introduce the characters and show how they end up leaving India on Ibis, a refurbished slaver now carrying opium to China in 1838. I was reminded of the structure of The Fellowship of the Ring as the disparate group comes to depend on each other for their lives, and as they separate at the end of this volume. Like other fans, I think that Ghosh should hurry to get the next in the series on the market.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "Sea of Poppies" red like an Indian version of "The Fellowship of the Ring". No coincidence that it is part of a trilogy! Ghosh's story is a daring blend of social classes/castes, languages, religions and more represented in a wonderful array of characters, all of whom dare to begin their journey out into the sea aboard the Ibis, a schooner. This is a love story, an adventure, a metaphor for life and more. The reader meets and either loves or abhors each of the memorable characters, their marvelous names, their multitude of histories, and their multiple aspects. I am definitely looking forward to reading the next installment of the trilogy, "River of Smoke".
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    For some reason, it was disorienting for me to have this sequel to Sea of Poppies begin far into the future with everyone settled in a satisfactory way (maybe). I assumed that this would be clarified at some point in the narrative, but it wasn't. Instead, a bunch of characters make their way, separately, to Canton. New characters join and become important to the narrative, but other characters are only alluded to and left to their own devices somewhere else. One of the character insertions that really annoyed me was Robin - a half caste son of a semi-famous painter. He seemed to have been inserted in the story just so he could become a disinterested observer to the events in Canton. Well, that and provide some light entertainment as he describes his search for a "Friend."Meanwhile, in Canton, we are treated to an up close and personal view of the machinations of the British. Desperate to maintain the opium trade and to gain a foothold in China, they are willing to go to war and no personal sacrifice on the part of any of their trading partners is too great to keep them from this goal. Mainly, I was overwhelmed by the descriptions of every blessed thing, from boats to clothing. These exhaustive descriptions were even included in "newsy" letters from Robin to Paulette (female amateur botanist not allowed into Canton). This tended to detract from the flow of the story.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Well, its a bit of a penny dreadful isnt it? The book it reminds me most of is Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger - its very much written to the same formula. Find a vanished aspect of colonialism, in Unsworth's case the slave trade, for Ghosh its the opium trade, and you can construct a narrative thread that brings together a motley cast of mutlicultural characters. Even better if you can grasp the patois of the time - and Ghosh's use of maritime patois based on a mix of Malay, Hindi, Portugese and goodness knows what else, is the best thing about the book. The language feels right and helps you get into the characters' skins.But the plot is predictable; people you think will fall in love, do so. People's who's fall is predicted, duly fall (finding humility in the process). Blaggards get their come uppance. True love overcomes obstacles. To the author's credit the plot rattles along and mostly sweeps you with it. But the author also has an irritating need to tie up all possible loose ends - characters who leave the narrative on p60 duly reappear on p400 - and how likely is it that you will find someone from your home village in central India on a ship from Calcutta to Mauritius for the sake of tying up a loose plot line? I find that sort of thing irritatingSo overall entertaining in its way, but literary fiction its not
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In "Sea Of Poppies" Amitav Ghosh attempts, largely successfully, to marry the adventure novels of a century ago (think Sabatini, or Conrad) with a more modern, global viewpoint. While at times (especially in the early chapters) the book feels in danger of reading like "India - United Colors of Benetton" with its oh-so-representative mix of characters and backgrounds, the story itself quickly carries you away, and you never feel that the characters exists _only_ to serve as a scaffold for the author's themes.There are weak points: sometimes Ghosh's imitation of the local pidgins gets a bit distracting, and the division between good and bad characters in the story is somewhat simplistic. All in all, though, the story is a good one. I didn't know much about this period in history and found it fascinating, especially as it left me wondering how much of the 'Free Trade' ideology can trace its origins to the British insistence on their moral right to be drug dealers. The characters are compelling and likable. I am looking forward to the remaining books in this trilogy.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the first instalment in a trilogy, of which the second – River of Smoke – was published last year. Set mainly in northern India, with the impending English-Chinese Opium War and the English outlawing of slavery as backdrop, it’s a riproaring adventure–romance with an extraordinarily diverse cast of characters: a peasant wife forced into dependency on the East India Company, a young Frenchwoman adopted by a wealthy English family after the death of her enlightened parents, a young Indian man who makes a living as a boatman on the Ganga and yearns to be a sailor on the open sea, a Hindu mystic who believes himself to be possessed by the spirit of his deceased female guru, a freeborn Black American sailor who passes for white, a rajah whose life is ruled by ceremony but who finds himself suddenly and humiliatingly deprived of his status, a ship’s crew of lascars. As the book progresses we realise that the disparate paths of all these characters are converging – from desire, necessity, ambition or coercion, they are all to board a former slave ship, which is to take a cargo of indentured workers to Mauritius. The first half is like a pool above a waterfall: it takes a while, but you realise that all the narratives are moving inexorably towards the same point, and they’re picking up speed. When the ship sails you can almost hear the roar of the falls in the trilingual prayers of those on board, and then there’s another hundred pages of churning and roiling, and just as you think perhaps it will all settle down (with a shipboard wedding here, a comic-mystic revelation there) we’re plunged into a new tumult – not so much a cliff-hanger as an over-a-new-cliff ending.All that is marvellous, but it’s the language(s) that make the book sing: not just the sometimes familiar bits of Indian English like the dhoti, kameez and puja that occur on the first page, but the lascar lingo and the garbled slang of the English in India, the French- or Bengali-inflected dialogue of particular individuals, the technical terms of the opium and sailing trades, the traditional languages of Islamic, Hindu and Catholic prayer, botanical nomenclature … It’s a written equivalent of the spectacle that assails the senses in the streets of India.The nastiness of the Raj and the English poppy trade in India and China is brought home with visceral force, and the ruthless indenturing process by which many Indians found their way to Mauritius is similarly given flesh.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Set in India just before the opium war with China, Sea of Poppies centers on the lives of various characters and the challenges which in one way or another lead them to be shipmates on the Ibis, a large vessel which is about to set sail for distant lands. The Ibis was once a slave-ship, but was revamped to transport indentured servants and opium.We meet and get to know Deeti a woman whose husband suffers from the affects of the drug they depend on for their livelihood, Kalua, a simple man with simple needs, Neel Rattan Halder, a spoiled, wealthy land owner with complicated needs, Paulette, a brave young adventuress, and many more. Though there are a lot characters, it’s not difficult to keep track of them because their lives are explored in detail.As the circumstances of each character slowly start to intersect with one another, the reader becomes aware of the impending departure of the big ship and the reason each person has for being aboard. Life on the Ibis is dangerous and complicated but a rhythm develops where everyone knows their role and duties and so is able to get by – unless the rules are broken. What happens then is a ‘sit on the edge of your seat’ type action.Occasionally the dialogue is difficult to understand, as it’s a mixture of British and Indian dialects. For example, on page 44: “In the old days the Rascally bobachee-connah was the best in the city. No fear of pishpash and cobbily-mash at the Rascally table.”There is a glossary at the back of the book; however, it is not exhaustive. And even then, if I had stopped to look up every word I didn’t understand it would have interrupted the flow of the story. On the other hand, the language gave the story a very authentic feel and it wasn’t so pervasive that I didn’t understand what was going on.This novel has many layers and is rich in detail. Considering that Sea of Poppies is the first volume in a trilogy, the ending was wrapped up quite well. It didn’t leave too many open questions about the events that culminated on board the Ibis, but it did leave threads to be picked up in the second book. And there lies my only real unanswered question with this novel…when will the second book be published?
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I find this a somewhat difficult book to review. I am a fan of Ghosh's writing and, indeed, own almost all of his works. I find him a wise and thoughtful writer, one whose intelligence comes through in every line.But I'm not a particular fan of this book. Although intelligent and well-plotted, I found his fascination with the nautical jargon of the period astonishingly overdone and intrusive. There is no useful glossary to speak of (the "glossary" at the end is not, in fact, a true glossary but another fiction employed by Ghosh to give an insight into one character and the times) and context is not always a reliable guide to meaning. Far too many sentences were simply incomprehensible. While that didn't impede plot development (or, for the most part, character development), it went from a small impediment to an annoying, intrusive element that was present far too often. It is one thing to use such a device to add an element of verisimilitude; it is quite another to use it, as I find Ghosh does, to showcase his learning. It went beyond pedantic.Still, his research, in general, sat lightly and offered some fascinating insights into a place and a society now largely lost.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    If you are interested in place and especially Asia this is the book for you. It is the first of a trilogy, the second of which was just published and well received. I am taken by alien cultures and at the hands of a master such as Ghosh it is dazzling. Sea of Poppies is definitely worth a detour.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "I'm just peeved I have to wait an unknown length of time for the next book, as this one ended half way through a great story! "couldn't have said it better myself!Can't recommend this author enough!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I referred to this book on my LiveJournal as the unholy spawn of Patrick O'Brian and Salman Rushdie, and I meant that as a compliment. Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies is utterly irresistible. It manages to be thoroughly postcolonial (it is set during the 1830s, in the poppy fields in India, and then aboard a ship transporting a load of coolies to Mauritius; the bad guys are the British because of the opium trade to China), and really a good enjoyable read, incorporating real old-fashioned *stories* that play with cliche but keep veering off in more original directions. There are strong female characters who have convincing backstories, rather than feeling like 21st century women in costume. And just . . . story. This is a book that is both immensely well-researched and intelligent, as well as fun. And it has a whole array of characters who you will like and cheer on.It is the first book of a trilogy and an awful lot of time is spent getting the characters all in one place, but as their stories are fascinating, I didn't mind at all. The ending is very much a "to be continued." For some readers, the use and celebration of language may be an obstacle: the text is filled with Hindi and Urdu and Hindusthani and Bengali words and phrases, as well as a character who speaks in pidgin, an Englishman whose speech is peppered with Hobson-Jobson style Anglo-Indian, and a French character who keeps getting similar French and English words mixed up. But it all makes sense in context, and for me, those barriers to understanding really projected what was going on in that time and place.Read this book! It's tremendously enjoyable.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is my third reading of this novel. I read it over every time the next in the trilogy comes out. I absolutely LOVE this novel. The language is so complex, richly layered, and dizzyingly delightful; sometimes shockingly coarse and sometimes hauntingly poetic. You'll get nuanced tastes of Canton, Calcutta, England, America, a dash of Persian and French. This book has everything! pirates, feminism, botany, opium eaters, romance, brutality, high-seas adventure, religious hypocrisy, devoted parents, orphans, shockingly bigoted British exceptionalism/imperialism, heartwarming friendships, homosexuality/forbidden relationships, transgender transformation, the most dastardly villains and the most endearing good-hearted people. Definitely on my list of favorite novels of all time for all time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "How had it happened that when choosing the men and women who were to be torn from this subjugated plain, the hand of destiny had strayed so far inland, away from the busy coastlines, to alight on the people who were, of all, the most stubbornly rooted in the silt of the Ganga, in a soil that had to be sown with suffering to yield its crop of story and song? It was as if fate had thrust its fist through the living flesh of the land in order to tear away a piece of its stricken heart."This book is the beginning of what promises to be a sweeping saga. It follows multiple storylines, introduces a host of characters whose lives will eventually intertwine, and is set against the beautiful backdrop of colonial India. On top of all that, it is beautifully written. Divided into the three parts, the first part of the book concerns itself with setting up the backstories of the main characters. This was the slowest part for me because there is a lot to learn and a lot to remember in order to set the stage for the rest of the book. The second part of the book advances the storylines in preparation for bringing the main characters together in the third and final part of the book - the sea voyage aboard the Ibis:"It was not that she was especially sleek or rakish in appearance: neither lean, nor flush-decked like the clippers for which Baltimore was famous. She had a short quarter-deck, a risen fo'c's'le, with a fo'c's'le-deck between the bows, and a deckhouse amidships, that served as a galley and cabin for the bos'ns and stewards. With her cluttered main deck and her broad beam, the Ibis was sometimes taken for a schooner-rigged barque by old sailors: whether there was any truth truth to this Zachary did not know, but he never thought of her as anything other than the topsail schooner that she was when he first signed on to her crew. To his eye there was something unusually graceful about the Ibis's yacht-like rigging, with her sails aligned along her length rather than across the line of her hull. He could see why, with her main- and headsails standing fair, she might put someone in mind of a white-winged bird in flight: other tall-masted ships, with their stacked loads of square canvas, seemed almost ungainly in comparison." This book is well worth the time that it takes to assemble and discern the stories of its main characters. The third part of the book is much too short; the sea voyage was an old fashioned adventure filled with intrigue that passed much too quickly - I wanted more. I only had two gripes with this book, both of which are small and inconsequential in comparison to what the book has to offer its readers. The first is that this book contains a glossary which is more frustrating than illuminating. My advice is simply to ignore the glossary. There are passages in this book where you will feel like you are reading some obscure language that makes no sense, but if you keep reading, you will find that somehow, magically, you can discern the context of the words if not the individual meanings. This is more than sufficient to enjoy the book, as these passages do not make up the majority of the book. My second gripe is that this book cannot stand on its own. I know that it is part of an intended trilogy, and that it is an epic which means that this book is merely the first leg of the journey. However, that being said, I would have liked the ending to have less abruptness. The story felt SO unfinished, as if it had ended mid-sentence. I prefer a book that you feel could stand on its own even if it is part of a series. The beautiful writing and the well developed plot and characters more than make up for this, so by all means, do not hesitate to dive into this story, after all, the second book is already available, and so you can begin immediately, if you choose, on the second leg of the journey.**Baboo Nob Kissin is one of the more colorful characters in the book, and one of my personal favorites. Here is a quote that tickled me, and that I intend to work into my daily dialogue with the host of teenagers that occupy our house (i.e. my children): "... and on this point no concession can be made. Unreasonable demands must be strenuously opposed."