Amitav Ghosh’s new novel is out now. A very cleverly written historical plot one must say…
Amitav did his Doctorate from Oxford and here’s when he discovered something quite amazing. He found few historical letters which were written by Jewish traders of that time. While going through these letters he also found a letter by an Eyptian trader talking about Cinamon with somebody in Bangalore.
This was the time when Amitav decided he would write about it at some point of time in the future. The seed to the final thought ‘Sea of Poppies’ was laid back firmly at that time. Its is a matter of time only that the final face of the book is now in our hands.
The first in Amitav Ghosh’s new trilogy of novels, Sea of Poppies is a stunningly vibrant and intensely human work that confirms his reputation as a master storyteller. At the heart of this epic saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean to the Mauritius Islands. As to the people on board, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.
In a time of colonial upheaval in the mid nineteenth century, fate has thrown together a truly diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt Raja to a widowed village-woman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited European orphan.
As they sail down the Hooghly and into the sea, their old family ties are washed away, and they view themselves as jahaj-bhais (ship-brothers) who will build whole new lives for themselves in the remote islands where they are being taken. It is the beginning of an unlikely dynasty.
The sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields by the Ganga, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of China at the time of the Opium Wars. But it is the panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, which makes Sea of Poppies so breathtakingly alive—a masterpiece from one of the world's finest novelists.
But it is the panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the displeased colonial history of the East itself, which makes Sea of Poppies so breathtakingly alive -- a masterpiece from one of the world's finest novelists.
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