Sea of Poppies: A Novel
by Amitav Ghosh
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Book Summary Information
Author: Amitav GhoshEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-10-14
ISBN: 0670082031
Number of pages: 528
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Book Reviews of Sea of Poppies: A Novel
Book Review: "...it was this minuscule orb--at once bountiful and all-devouring, merciful and destructive, sustaining and vengeful."
Summary: 5 Stars
In this amazingly rich work, Amitav Ghosh has created a fantastically entertaining and moving novel. He promises two more parts to complete this masterpiece, but this work alone has vaulted him into rare literary ethers. He has threaded a needle and woven together a terrific group of characters who originate from the banks of the Ganges to the cities of London and Paris to the port of Baltimore. In vivid detail, the lives of a bankrupt Raja, a widowed tribeswoman, an American "metif," a low caste giant, and many more come together on the decks of the former U.S. slave ship Ibis. They all are sailing across the Black Waters to Mauritius with a cargo of indentured laborers, two convicts, and a crew of "lascars" (Indian sailors and soldiers).
Uncompromising in its ingenious and sometimes puzzling use of language and its ubiquitous references to Eastern culture, "Sea of Poppies" takes place in 1838 during the inception of the opium war with China. There are many plot summaries already given on this site, but in the mode of iconic 19th-and early 20th-century novels, this story is deeply insightful and grandly drawn up and brings to mind, as other reviewers have said, parallels to Dumas, Tolstoy, Dickens, Melville, and Conrad. The author has provided hundreds of details for us and clearly has researched sailing ships, the opium trade, drug addiction, 19th-century India and China, and much more. What is also unique here is that the inner compass of this work points east, not west. In its veins runs the intoxicating manna called opium. It feeds the entire British Empire, enslaves the lives of Indian farmers, and reduces humans to trembling beasts. It is the whip that drives everyone and everything in this book forward.
Before this masterpiece becomes a movie (it's crying out for cinematic treatment), I urge you to read it. Like an opiate itself, it is addictive. You will savor it for quite some time and long for the next serving. Let's hope we see the next one soon.
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