Book Review: Sea Of Poppies
The government to you is what God is to agnostics - only to be invoked when your own well being is at stake.Set in 1838 India, Sea of Poppies is the ambitious first novel of the proposed Ibis trilogy. 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. Amitav Ghosh introduces a truly diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, who symbolize the social, cultural and economic vessels for the time period that the author has chosen to explore. The tale evolves around distinct story lines of multiple characters, whom fate has thrown together on board of the Ibis. We meet a bankrupt Raja sentenced for deportation on charges of forgery, a widowed woman rescued from being a Sati by a lower caste man with whom she escapes for a new life, a Mulatto American freedman, a free spirited European orphan - and thus a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts come on board of a ship that would provide them a new identity. As they sail down the Hooghly river and into the sea, their old family ties are washed away and they view themselves as Jahaj Bhais, or ship brothers, who will build whole new lives for themselves in the remote islands where they are being taken while Ibis takes the reader to witness the eve of British attack on the Chinese ports known as the first opium war. Sea of poppies is an interesting and riveting tale with vivid and rich descriptions of settings and characters.
However the book has its own shares of disappointments. The thorough research done by the author is commendable but this has resulted in a crowded outcome where characters along with frequent usage of multilingual language have often turned into treasure vaults storing customs, languages, behaviours, practices, costumes, and trade in the early nineteenth century India.
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