Sea of Poppies: A Novel (The Ibis Trilogy, 1)

Book arrived in perfect condition and the series is an amazing testament to the people of South Asia!

Other reviews can give you a good idea of the book's plot, and the wonderful quality of the writing. I was especially struck that nearly every character misunderstands someone else's language, motivations or both -- you can almost pick any two of the main characters at random, and find some example of a miscommunication between them. Don't worry, the same Anglo-Indian or lascar (Asian sailor) slang that puzzles you is puzzling some character in the book. Even the communication between the American hero and the young French woman who seems to be his romantic interest is a comedy of errors. Having spent a big chunk of my life in a multicultural environment at work and at home, it was easy to identify with what they were going through. If you haven't yet had that experience in real life, the novel provides is a very colorful illustration of it. As others have noted, if you weren't familiar already with the British opium trade, this book will open your eyes (or at least start to; opium's impact on the Chinese population is touched on only briefly in this part of the story). I'm not sure that, as one reviewer suggests, opium is intended to be a metaphor for oil today, but the opium story *is* a good example of how free trade and globalization dogma affect people. Ghosh's Ph.D. in social anthropology no doubt helps him with this aspect of the plot structure. At the time of the novel, as now, many people in English-speaking countries believed in the idea that each country had a "comparative advantage" in selling something, and that more trade was better. Ghosh briefly alludes to this theory, put forward by economist David Ricardo, through the mouth of one of his characters. The British wanted to buy Chinese tea, silk and porcelain -- China's comparative advantage. Problem was, China wasn't interested in buying anything from the British. They refused to trade unless the British paid in silver. The British regarded this as a block on free trade. Since opium could grow well in British India, the British hit on the idea that the Chinese should buy Indian opium, paid for with trade in Chinese goods. The fact that opium is addictive made this arrangement all the more brilliant, from the British point of view. Ultimately (and after the action in this novel), the British would attack China with military force, to "enforce" the principle of free trade. Ghosh shows that being an opium trader (or one's wife) didn't prevent you from being pompous, self-righteous and moralizing. He also vividly describes how this trade created hardship for local farmers in India -- the British required that growing opium be given higher priority than growing food crops. Something like that happens in modern globalization, too. A poor country borrows money from the World Bank or IMF. The loans are in dollars or euro, but almost inevitably the country lacks the foreign currency it needs to make payments on the loan. So the IMF requires the country to prioritize growing crops for e

When the former slaving ship, the Ibis, sails off from America to India, Zachary Reid enlists as a ship's carpenter to escape his American fate as a son of a freed slave girl and her master. Little does he know, how much his life will actually be transformed by this decision... The year is 1838, and Asia is on the eve of the Opium Wars. The fates of several people become intertwined, as they make their way onto the Ibis. Deeti is a peasant who grows crops of opium, and a wife of the opium factory worker, addicted to the drug. When her husband dies, grey-eyed Deeti has to escape the attention of her vicious brother-in-law. Her only idea is the sati - but unexpectedly, she is snatched from the funeral pyre and becomes an outcast together with her savior, Kalua, the village strongman from the caste of untouchables. They decide to become indentured workers ("coolies") and seek their happiness in the Mauritius. Paulette Lambert, the daughter of a French botanist, is orphaned and cannot bear the strange behavior of Mr Burnham (who happens to be the owner of Ibis), and his family, when he takes her under his protective roof. Neel Rattan, the Raja, finds himself unable to adjust to the changing ways of the colonial world, and, bankrupt, is send to exile. In jail, he meets the half-Chinese Ah Fatt, convicted for robbery. Baboo Nob Kissin (the funniest and probably the most tragic of the main characters), the company's accountant, filled with religious spirit, is overcome by the need of establishing a shrine. All of these original, hilarious characters come to see the overseas trip as an escape. And so their journey is the new beginning. Amitav Ghosh wrote a great, magnificent, epic novel, a beautiful, complex story revolving around central characters, original and colorful, a great choice of the representatives of the nineteenth-century society in colonial Asia. There are also many great secondary characters (the ship's first mate, Jack Crowle; Jodu, the peasant turned lascar; Serang Ali - the lascar's boss with the gloomy past; the flirtatious girl Munia; and many others), who add a lot of flavor. The historical details are thoroughly researched - for me, coming from Europe and ignorant of the most part of Asian history, it was a great lesson. The global problems tackled by the author, colonial politics, wars, caste and race, remain significant even today. The geography and landscape descriptions, from India, Calcutta, Mauritius (real and imaginary) to the Sundarbans , one of Ghosh's favorite locations, are also alluring. The incredibly rich language adds the whole other dimension to the novel. I have to admit that at the beginning the linguistic peculiarities characteristic for each character made the novel difficult to read and I needed to adjust for a while. The sea pidgin, Bengali, Hindi and other dialects of India incorporated into English, with some French added on top of all that, create a unique mix of idiolects. There is a lovely bonus at th

Somehow when I was in college I missed the fact that the British at one time were drug manufactures and drug pushers. In fact they were drug lords before there even was a Columbia. They forced Indians to grow poppies all along the Ganges, forced them to cultivate them and turn them into opium, which they forced upon the Chinese and when the emperor tried to outlaw it, they went to war to preserve free trade, which actually meant to preserve their right to keep selling opium to the emperor's subjects, no matter his opinion on the subject. This book deals with poppy growing and the opium trade and it doesn't paint the British in a very good light, but then perhaps they didn't deserve to be portrayed as saints, because they surly were sinners of the first order. A group of people, outcasts, outlaws or just plain down casts, are thrown aboard the Ibis, a ship that at one time carried slaves, but since that has been outlawed now carries indentured servants and opium. Their voyage is the real story, although the conversion of poppies to opium is quite a story in itself. Mr. Ghosh has put together a cast of characters you won't soon forget, though reading the book is sometimes a bit hard going as Mr. Ghosh, it seems, has gone to great pains to paint his character's speech with words from that time in history. Usually I could figure out what was going on, for example in the line, "There's a paltan of mems who'd give their last anna to be in your jooties," you can mentally translate to "There's a lot of people who'd give their last cent to be in your shoes," but it's not all that easy. Sometimes I'd have to read on without understanding exactly what I was reading. But despite the fact that I had a hard time with some of the language, I didn't have a hard time sympathizing with the characters aboard the Ibis. Their lives and their plight both warmed me and chilled me at the same time. Though this was at times a difficult book for me to read, I am eagerly awaiting the next volume in this trilogy, which I know, based on this book, will have me primed for the last. This is a book for the ages, literature at its very best.

Amitav Ghosh's books create an ambience that doesn't belong to this era. This books deals with the genesis of the opium trade, the way it grew and how it helped the East India Company use the riches generated by it to control not just India but also others. Ghosh's ability to create a highly detailed picture of those times at various societal levels and their interactions (with all their polictical intrigues and social interactions) points to well done, in-depth research on the subject. His maturity as a writer is evident since the book never becomes judgmental. The book involves the reader at various levels - as an engaging story and as a historical novel. I wouldn't like to reveal much of the story and rob you of your enjoyment but this is one book which is sure to leave you with a sense of fulfilment. It is like a rich, royal literary feast.